Legal Commentary

ACLU Releases Report on Patriot Act Abuses

By Jeralyn

Provisions of the Patriot Act will be coming up for renewal in December. The ACLU has been busy meeting with members of Congress and compiling data. Today they released a new report, "Reclaiming Patriotism" which catalogs the abuses during the past eight years. The report is available here (pdf.)

From the gagging of our nation’s librarians under the national security letter statute to the gutting of time-honored surveillance laws, the Patriot Act has been disastrous for Americans’ rights,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “In the panic following the events of 9/11, our nation’s lawmakers hastily expanded the government’s authority to a dangerous level and opened a Pandora’s box of surveillance.”

Check out their new site, Reform the Patriot Act. [More...]

“Reclaiming Patriotism” reveals that in the years since its passage, the Patriot Act has paved the way for the expansion of government-sponsored surveillance including the gutting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and a recent revamping of the Attorney General Guidelines to allow law enforcement to conduct physical surveillance without suspicion.

These are the provisions that need amending:

• National Security Letters. ACLU's Doe v. Mukasey forced the second circuit to strike down the draconian gag rule that prevents NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested consumer communication, financial and credit records. Also, government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these requests go out each year, most against Americans, and many against people unrelated to terrorism.

• Material Support Statute. This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial.

• FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to collect international communications coming into and out of the US in the absence of a warrant, even if one end of the communication is an American on American soil. This too must be amended to provide meaningful protections in the surveillance super structure.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).