“Give us all your liberties, and we will keep you safe.” – Intentions of the United States Congress under the USA PATRIOT Act, 2001-2010
[Thanks to LS for preparing the below video. Please leave any comments below, including how to improve the audio quality, this is the first time the campaign is trying this method out.]
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WASHINGTON, DC – Just three days before the USA PATRIOT Act was to expire, Congress used a backdoor method to camouflage the stripping away of civil liberties until after the 2010 election. The bill, HR 3961, was originally passed by the House last fall as the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. While the Republocrats originally wanted to add the PATRIOT Act reauthorization to the so-called* “jobs” bill, some dissent on the jobs portion by some Republicans and on the PATRIOT portion by some Democrats delayed the bill, so Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) had to resort to the backdoor amendment of HR 3961.
The Senate passed the amendment unanimously, and the House passed the bill 315-97 with 20 not voting. President Barack Obama signed the bill yesterday. For those unaware, here are a few of the liberties we have lost:
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Section 218 gives a secret court the ability to authorize secret searches, wiretaps of private conversations, and examine any financial transaction of Americans if there is a mere suspicion of foreign intelligence. Previously, police forces had to present a warrant and also describe what items they are searching for and why. -
Section 213 of the PATRIOT Act not only authorizes the FBI to secretly break into your home, rummage through it, but does not even inform you that the government has committed this until 18 months have passed, and may suspend this notification indefinitely.
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Sections 505 and 215 authorizes the government to secretly examine your private information provided it is somehow linked to terrorism. This includes searching the third-party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, or places of worship without your consent or even knowledge. Previously, the bare minimum for authorization would be from a grand jury or warrant served with probable cause.
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Any financial transaction over $10,000 is reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a sub-branch of the Treasury Department, as possible criminal or terrorist activity per Section 365 before being processed.
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Section 412 enables the government to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely and to suspend habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is the ability of those held to appear before a court and determine why they are being held and challenge whether their detention is lawful.
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The Congress has failed to check the executive branch’s assumption of powers to place “enemy combatants” in secret prisons and torture them.
Note that when an individual is suspected of planning a terrorist act – or committing any other criminal act for that matter – the lawful method of obtaining a warrant, announcing searches, and providing probable cause all – in NO way – defeat the ability of the government to investigate and deter the act from occurring or bring suspects to justice in a court of law.**
Joe Stack’s politically-motivated bombing and murder at the IRS offices in Austin still occurred with the PATRIOT Act in place. With or without the PATRIOT Act, Najibullah Zazi’s recent plot to bomb the New York subway could have been stopped. [As a matter of fact, Zazi explained his reason for the attack was the murder of civilians in Afghanistan, a form of blowback I warn about in my Afghanistan War plank.]
The Nigerian airline bomber over the past Christmas holiday was allowed to board the plane without a passport or luggage and was tackled by passengers when he lit himself on fire. These are all examples of the failure of the PATRIOT Act to provide security. I have the common sense solutions to vastly improve security that do not require the government’s unconstitutional infringements of the Fourth Amendment*** and the creation of a massive $51 billion-a-year bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security.
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The incumbent Republocrat in my race, Charlie Dent, did not vote on HR 3961. As usual, there is no reason or listing of his actions available on his website, but I remind voters in my district that with “Our Open Office” simple-yet-novel plan for open and transparent government, residents will always be able to track not only my votes but also read WHY I voted which way, plus they will be able to share their opinion publicly online with me, as well as by phone, mail, etc.
However, Dent has voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. In 2008, Dent voted for the “Mother of All Bailouts” bill, HR 3221, which not accelerated the nationalization of the housing industry, but also in Section 6050 authorized the IRS to view every single credit card transaction made by every single individual in the United States without a warrant or informing the individual. [This bill should not be confused with the Wall Street Banker Bailout of 2008, which Dent also voted for.] Dent also voted for HR 6304 in 2008 where Title 8, Section 801 gave private companies legal immunity to commit warrantless wiretapping on any phone or email communication from any American citizen.
America is on a steep course to a totalitarian state. The President recently revealed that his assassination list maintained by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) includes American citizens. While I am sure this list contains some very bad people, the concept of an America executing its own citizens without a criminal trial is a perversion of the rule of law. We have forgotten why the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is so crucial to a free society. The civil liberty violations by the PATRIOT Act and torture at Guantanamo Bay under Republican Bush moved our nation to “presuming guilt until proven innocent.” Now under Democrat Obama, the unlawful policy of assuming Americans are “guilty until executed” continues.
Congress’s claim that only through the loss of constitutional liberties can America be made safe is a blatant blasphemy to the very notion of a free and open society. As the future public servant of Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district, I pledge to introduce a bill to revoke the PATRIOT Act as soon as I am seated in office, and to vote against any extension of it.
As Benjamin Franklin once noted, those who sacrifice essential liberties in the name of temporary security will soon have – and deserve – neither.
February 28, 2010
* To how to easily create jobs, read my Jobs plank.
** As former NJ Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano notes: “The tools Congress gave to intelligence agencies are only constitutional when used just for intelligence purposes — like watching or deporting foreign spies — and only against genuine foreign threats. When criminal prosecution is implicated, the Constitution’s protections are triggered. Most Americans don’t want the government to know of their personal behavior, not because we have anything to hide, but because without probable cause, without some demonstrable evidence of some personal criminal behavior, the Constitution declares that our personal lives are none of the federal government’s business.
“Government is not reason or eloquence, George Washington once said, it is force. That’s why we have a Constitution: to restrain the government’s exercise of force so we can be a free people. Government surveillance undermines freedom because it is natural to hesitate to exercise freedom when the government is watching and recording.”
** The Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 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.”
Below left is a speech I gave last year on camera surveillance and the Fourth Amendment. Below right is a video of Judge Napolitano discussing the USA PATRIOT Act.
