Submitted by Prometheus 6 on February 11, 2006 - 6:09am.
So the Senate and House of Representatives have come to terms on a bill to extend the "controversial" provisions of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. The New York Times says Congress caved.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Patriot Act is the "gag order" imposed by Section 215, which prohibits anyone holding financial, medical and other private records of ordinary Americans from saying anything when the government issues a subpoena for those records. That means that a person whose records are being taken, and whose privacy is being invaded, has no way to know about the subpoena and no way to challenge it.
Rather than removing this gag order, the deal keeps it in place for a full year — too long for Americans to wait to learn that the government is spying on them. Even after a year, someone holding such records would have to meet an exceedingly high standard to get the gag order lifted. It is not clear that this change has much value at all.
The compromise also fails to address another problem with Section 215: it lets the government go on fishing expeditions, spying on Americans with no connection to terrorism or foreign powers. The act should require the government, in order to get a subpoena, to show that there is a connection between the information it is seeking and a terrorist or a spy.
But the deal would allow subpoenas in instances when there are reasonable grounds for simply believing that information is relevant to a terrorism investigation. That is an extremely low bar.
One of the most well-publicized objections to the Patriot Act is the fact that it allows the government to issue national security letters, an extremely broad investigative tool, to libraries, forcing them to turn over their patrons' Internet records. The wording of the compromise is unclear. If it actually says that national security letters cannot be used to get Internet records from libraries, that would be an improvement, but it is not clear that it does.
Unfortunately, the creation of an arm of the Secret Service authorized to arrest people without a warrant on mere suspicion is not considered controversial.
This isn't limited to spies or anything, and if it's not unconstitutional then the Constitution is less useful than toilet paper. In fact, I can tell you how decisions in cases where an arrest was made under this provision will go.
- Initial trial: arrest was made pursuant to provisions in the P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act
- Appeal: No legal or precedural errors were made by the lower court; appeal denied
- Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment says no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. No warrant was issued, so the law is constitutional
- I wipe my ass
