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Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through
Congress
By Jim Lobe
OneWorld US
Friday 21 November 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress is poised to approve new legislation
that amounts to the first substantive expansion of the controversial USA Patriot
Act since it was approved just after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York
and the Pentagon.
Acting at the Bush administration's behest, a joint House-Senate
conference committee has approved a provision in the 2004 Intelligence
Authorization bill that will permit the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to
demand records from a number of businesses--without the approval of a judge or
grand jury--if it deems them relevant to a counter-terrorism investigation.
The measure would extend the FBI's power to seize records from
banks and credit unions to securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel
agencies, car dealers, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business
that, according to the government, has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal,
tax or regulatory matters." Such seizures could be carried out with the approval
of the judicial branch of government.
Until now only banks, credit unions, and similar financial
institutions were obliged to turn over such records on the FBI's demand.
Shortly after the conference agreement was reached, the House of
Representatives approved the underlying authorization bill by a margin of 263 to
163. The measure is expected to pass the Senate shortly.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was
"disappointed" with the House's approval, but also expressed satisfaction that a
number of lawmakers on both left and right decided to oppose the bill because
they oppose the records provision, whose inclusion in the bill was discovered by
staff aides only last week.
Particularly notable in Thursday's House vote was the defection
by several conservative Republicans from the administration's fold.
"This PATRIOT Act expansion was the only controversial part of
this legislation, and it prompted more than a third of the House, including 15
conservative Republicans, to change what is normally a cakewalk vote into
something truly contested," said Timothy Edgar, ACLU Legislative Counsel.
"One need look no further than this vote to get an effective
gauge of the PATRIOT Act's lack of popularity on Capitol Hill and among the
American people," he said.
The USA PATRIOT Act--which gives unprecedented powers to the FBI
and the federal government as a whole and was rammed through Congress at the
administration's behest just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks--has evoked great
controversy.
An unusual coalition of liberal, left, and right-wing groups is
convinced that the law's expansion of the government's surveillance and
investigatory powers threatens individual freedoms and privacy rights.
More than 200 local governments, including some of the country's
largest cities, have approved resolutions upholding the full enjoyment of the
rights guaranteed in the Constitution and urging a narrowing of the USA PATRIOT
Act, while the Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series of critical
hearings over the past month about the Act's impact.
Members of the Judiciary Committee, including Republican Larry
Craig of Idaho and five Democratic senators, sent a letter to the conference
committee earlier this week urging it strip the new provision from the
intelligence bill so that it could be taken up by their Committee in public
hearings. The provision has never been publicly debated.
"I'm concerned about this," Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, who
tried unsuccessfully to limit the life of the new provision, told the New York
Times. "The idea of expanding the powers of government gives everyone pause
except the Republican leadership."
The government wants these powers in order to more effectively
prosecute the "war on terrorism," although critics warn that, once given these
powers, the FBI may use them in cases that are not relevant to terrorism in
order to gather evidence against other targets of investigation.
Indeed, recent Senate hearings have covered incidents in which
information about individuals was obtained by the FBI through the use of its
counter-terrorism powers even though the such investigations were directed
against what the ACLU called "garden-variety criminals."
The provision not only permits the FBI to seize records from more
kinds of businesses; it also forbids businesses from informing their clients
about the seizures.
In that respect, it is comparable to a particularly controversial
section of the PATRIOT Act permitting the FBI to seek an order for library
records for an "investigation to protect against international terrorism or
clandestine intelligence activities" and imposing a gag order on librarians, who
are prohibited from telling anyone that the FBI demanded the records. Librarians
and civil-liberties groups have sued the government to have that section
declared unconstitutional.
"The more checks and balances against government abuse are
eroded, the greater that abuse," said the ACLU's Edgar. "We're going to regret
these initiatives down the road."
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2003
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