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AMP Comment - Oct. 26, 2005
Fourth Anniversary of the Patriot Act
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
The U.S. Muslim community in the United States, California in particular, has taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a California Senate Office Of Research report.
October 26 marks the fourth anniversary of the 342-pages-long Patriot Act, which was passed just 45 days after the September 11 attacks with virtually no debate. The Act, which amends 15 statutes, expands the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens and permits detention and deportation of non-citizens suspected of supporting groups the government considers "terrorist" organizations.
The USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The Patriot Act is manipulative in its very title, was all about using the tragic events of September 11th, 2001 as a crowbar to break through all resistance to a long sought wish list of repressively police state prerogatives. As any objective assessment of the federal government's record in the years since the law was passed suffices to confirm that the abuses we already know about under the aegis of this law are as disturbing as the actual results of the trials and convictions of “terrorists” are risible.
Starting with the USA Patriot Act, draconian measures and indiscriminate detentions and deportations have destabilized and criminalized Arab and Muslim communities across the United States. Also since September 11, U.S.-based Arab and Islamic organizations that provide humanitarian assistance to the people of war-torn nations including Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been accused of "supporting terrorism" and summarily closed down by the Justice Department.
The Patriot Act was responsible for more innocent incarcerations rather than convictions of Arabs and Muslims. The U.S. Muslim community in the United States, California in particular, has taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a California Senate Office Of Research report. The measures created a fear that gripped the Muslim community in Californian and elsewhere following federal sweeps, round-ups, detentions of innocent Muslims, who had neither terrorist intentions nor any connection to terrorist organizations, the 82-page report pointed out. The report, released in May last year, cited several "stories" about detainees "who were picked up, locked up, deported or detained for hours, days or years".
While the Arabs and Muslims were its immediate target, the Patriot Act has been widely condemned by civil rights and civic organizations as well as many communities because it impinges on the Bill of Rights, specifically the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments.
Seven states and nearly 400 communities of all political persuasions have passed resolutions criticizing the law’s excesses and upholding the civil liberties of their 62 million residents. The National League of Cities, representing 18,000 cities, has passed a similar resolution. Conservative organizations such as those in “Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances” have joined progressive organizations, business groups (such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Financial Services Roundtable), the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union and others in an unprecedented expression of local democracy calling for major reforms to this federal law.
Yet Congress is currently reauthorizing the law, with only minor amendments. None of the sixteen provisions scheduled to sunset this year will now do so. While there is some tinkering at the edges, and a couple of provisions will have new sunsets established, almost all provisions of the law will now be made effectively permanent. These can be and have been used not just against terrorists, but as a routine part of domestic criminal law enforcement and in ways that affect the rights of everyone in the country.
There are those within the extreme political right who have historically looked for an opportunity to usurp the constitutional and civil liberties and civil rights of American citizens. Today that threat is being manifested in the auspices of the present Patriot Act and other legal stratagem, in attempts to use the serious and real threats of terrorism to force American citizens to choose between safety and constitutional rights. History has taught us that, without constitutional checks and balances, the rights of citizens will be trampled on by the very government and agencies who were created to uphold the constitution and protect the people.
We remember how the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover attempted to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. We remember how the FBI and the Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program) under the CIA and local law enforcement destroyed the indigenous freedom organizations like the Black Panther Party and attempted to destroy various other organizations in the Anti-Vietnam War movement. We remember the forced internment of Japanese American citizens in our nation.
The Patriot Act’s basic constitutional problems remain, among them its broad definition of terrorism, which is so vague that it chills peaceful dissent and civil disobedience. Amendments to Section 215 (the so-called “library” provision) to protect the reading habits of innocent people were passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives in June. However, these were prevented from being brought to the floor as an amendment to the House bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act by the Republican leadership. That provision in fact applies not just to libraries but allows the FBI to search and seize records of all types, and “any tangible thing,” on mere suspicion of terrorism and with the approval only of a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. And the new law continues to include permanent gag orders preventing disclosure of such searches and seizures to anyone other than your attorney. Section 505 of the law, on "national security letters," allows the FBI to obtain specific types of records from certain categories of businesses without any court at all being involved; the FBI simply writes its own orders.
Sections including 214 expand the FBI’s capability to wiretap phones and tap emails and web visits. But whereas the phone "trap-and-trace" authority gives them only phone numbers, tapping emails and web visits gives them some content. Although they’re not supposed to look at the content, there are no checks to ensure they don’t.
Section 213, the “sneak-and-peek” provision that broadly allows secret home and office searches, remains essentially unchanged, except for new Congressional reporting obligations on the number of times the provision’s been used. The discriminatory ability to detain foreigners suspected of terrorism basically on the say so of one person – the U.S. Attorney General – wasn’t touched, nor were the broad array of anti-immigrant provisions granting the government sweeping powers to deport people based on constitutionally protected speech.
Immediately after 9/11, and in the years since, many have suggested that a “trade-off” of liberty and security is needed to reach a new “balance.” This assumes that the price of more security is always less liberty. But it misses the important truth that security and liberty, in the main, are not opposed but complementary. Protection of our national security and protection of our civil rights are not mutually exclusive. These are not values that need to be weighed, nor pitted against, one another. In the words of Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer says: “We must strive for an America that is both safe and free.”
The loss of civil rights often begins with the reduction of rights in a time of crisis, for a minority that become the scapegoat for a problem facing the nation. The situation can become particularly explosive in a time of national tragedy or war. But when civil rights for one group of Americans are threatened and the disappearance of those rights are accepted, it becomes a potential threat to many others. The history of the United Stats is that rights are not given, they are won and they always be defended.
The Patriot Act is an example of the step-by-step journey toward giving government the permission to erode the very rights they are elected to uphold. The reason that the Bill of Rights was enacted in the first place, was to protect the people from incursions by the government.
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