Post-9/11 laws expand to more than terrorism

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Tue Jun 15 09:34:37 PDT 2004


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http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/nw_washington/article/0,1891,TRN_5707_2962597,00.html
Post-9/11 laws expand to more than terrorism

By LANCE GAY
June 14, 2004


 Federal and state prosecutors are applying stiff antiterrorism laws
adopted after the 9/11 attacks to broad, run-of-the-mill probes of
political corruption, financial crimes and immigration frauds.

 If the government gets its way, even routine transactions of buying or
selling American homes could soon come under the scrutiny of
money-laundering provisions of the USA Patriot Act. The Treasury
Department, which already has caught up financial transactions in casinos,
storefront check-cashing stores and auto dealers for scrutiny, wants to
expand Patriot Act coverage to home purchases as well.

 Since 9/11, critics say the greatest effect of new state and federal
antiterrorism laws has been on crimes already covered by other laws.

 Washington-area snipers John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were both
convicted under a post-9/11 Virginia antiterrorism statute making it a
death-penalty offense to be involved in more than one murder in a
three-year period. Muhammad was sentenced to death, and Malvo was given
life imprisonment without parole.

 The FBI has used Patriot Act provisions in a political corruption probe
involving a Las Vegas girlie bar, and the Justice Department reported to
the House Judiciary Committee last year that it used the new law in probes
of credit-card fraud, theft from a bank account and a kidnapping.

 In the first action of its kind, the Treasury Department also used the
Patriot Act this year to put Syria's largest commercial bank and two
commercial banks in Myanmar on blacklists - actions that forbid any U.S.
financial institution from doing business with them.

 Legal experts say they're not surprised that antiterrorism laws are being
used for more than just terrorism.

 Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, recalled that
Congress adopted antiracketeering laws in 1970 with the intent to thwart
mobsters, but the punitive laws have since been broadened and put to use in
civil cases against corporations, and most recently against the organized
campaigns of pro-life protesters against abortion clinics.

 Swire worked in the Clinton administration and chaired a White House
working group looking at issues involved with electronic surveillance. He
said many Patriot Act provisions, which sped through Congress within days
after 9/11, were proposals that either Congress or the White House had
previously rejected. Many provisions are slated to expire next year unless
Congress makes the changes permanent.

 Swire said one little-noted impact of that law on the judicial system is
that prosecutors can add more charges against defendants, even when
terrorism isn't involved.

 "Prosecutors like to have more arrows in their quiver - it gives them more
leverage in plea bargaining," he said. Plea bargaining is the process where
prosecutors offer to drop some charges in return for a defendant's guilty
plea in order to avoid costly, time-consuming trials.

 Swire contends the Patriot Act has been so controversial that the Justice
Department has been very cautious in using all of its provisions.

 "They are careful because they know people are checking to see if it is
abused," he said. "Once it becomes permanent, I think it will be used more
widely."

 The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups are
campaigning for Congress to terminate some of the more controversial
provisions of the Patriot Act, contending the law unnecessarily expands
government powers.

 The ACLU says the government already has sufficient investigative tools,
and the Patriot Act has been used for non-terrorist-related crimes such as
seizing stolen funds from bank accounts in Belize.

 Michael Mello, a law professor at Vermont Law School, disagrees and said
the Patriot Act made some needed changes in government procedures,
including provisions that tore down barriers that prohibited the FBI and
CIA from sharing information.

 "There's been a sea change by tearing down that wall," said Mello. "To
forbid the FBI from getting spooks' (CIA) information that someone in the
United States was carrying out a significant criminal enterprise is insane."

 In spite of the criticism from the ACLU and others, Mello said he doesn't
believe the Patriot Act has been misused or has resulted in any expansion
of government powers. "In the absence of evidence, the critics lose," he
said.

 Mello agrees that there are some provisions in the Patriot Act that should
be allowed to expire. He opposes a controversial provision allowing the
Justice Department to use so-called "national security letters" to obtain
library records, medical records and banking records of people put under
surveillance. The Patriot Act wasn't needed when police searched library
records in the hunt for Unabomber Ted Kaczynski or the effort to track New
York's Zodiac killer, Mello noted.

 Many government activities under the Patriot Act remain shrouded in
secrecy. One of the provisions not expiring is an expansion of police
powers to obtain "sneak-and-peek" warrants allowing surveillances -
including break-ins - without notifying the people being watched.

 The government is being more aggressive in asking courts for surveillance
warrants. The Justice Department last year made a record 1,727 requests for
wiretap approvals from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, but does not publicly disclose how many investigations that might
involve.

 Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee last
week that the Patriot Act has been used judiciously, and he urged Congress
to give speedy consideration to extending it.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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