[progchat_action] PATRIOT ACT EXPANSION MOVES THROUGH CONGRESS

http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/73383/1/

PATRIOT ACT EXPANSION MOVES THROUGH CONGRESS

OneWorld US
21 November 2003

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov 21 (OneWorld) -- Congress is poised to approve new
legislation that amounts to the first substantive expansion of the
controversial USA Patriot Act since it was approved just after the
September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Acting at the Bush administration's behest, a joint House-Senate
conference committee has approved a provision in the 2004 Intelligence
Authorization bill that will permit the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) to demand records from a number of businesses--without the approval
of a judge or grand jury--if it deems them relevant to a counter-terrorism
investigation.

The measure would extend the FBI's power to seize records from banks and
credit unions to securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies,
car dealers, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business
that, according to the government, has a "high degree of usefulness in
criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Such seizures could be carried out
with the approval of the judicial branch of government.

Until now only banks, credit unions, and similar financial institutions
were obliged to turn over such records on the FBI's demand.

Shortly after the conference agreement was reached, the House of
Representatives approved the underlying authorization bill by a margin of
263 to 163. The measure is expected to pass the Senate shortly.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was "disappointed" with
the House's approval, but also expressed satisfaction that a number of
lawmakers on both left and right decided to oppose the bill because they
oppose the records provision, whose inclusion in the bill was discovered
by staff aides only last week.

Particularly notable in Thursday's House vote was the defection by several
conservative Republicans from the administration's fold.

"This PATRIOT Act expansion was the only controversial part of this
legislation, and it prompted more than a third of the House, including 15
conservative Republicans, to change what is normally a cakewalk vote into
something truly contested," said Timothy Edgar, ACLU Legislative Counsel.

"One need look no further than this vote to get an effective gauge of the
PATRIOT Act's lack of popularity on Capitol Hill and among the American
people," he said.

The USA PATRIOT Act--which gives unprecedented powers to the FBI and the
federal government as a whole and was rammed through Congress at the
administration's behest just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks--has evoked
great controversy.

An unusual coalition of liberal, left, and right-wing groups is convinced
that the law's expansion of the government's surveillance and
investigatory powers threatens individual freedoms and privacy rights.

More than 200 local governments, including some of the country's largest
cities, have approved resolutions upholding the full enjoyment of the
rights guaranteed in the Constitution and urging a narrowing of the USA
PATRIOT Act, while the Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a
series of critical hearings over the past month about the Act's impact.

Members of the Judiciary Committee, including Republican Larry Craig of
Idaho and five Democratic senators, sent a letter to the conference
committee earlier this week urging it strip the new provision from the
intelligence bill so that it could be taken up by their Committee in
public hearings. The provision has never been publicly debated.

"I'm concerned about this," Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, who tried
unsuccessfully to limit the life of the new provision, told the New York
Times. "The idea of expanding the powers of government gives everyone
pause except the Republican leadership."

The government wants these powers in order to more effectively prosecute
the "war on terrorism," although critics warn that, once given these
powers, the FBI may use them in cases that are not relevant to terrorism
in order to gather evidence against other targets of investigation.

Indeed, recent Senate hearings have covered incidents in which information
about individuals was obtained by the FBI through the use of its
counter-terrorism powers even though the such investigations were directed
against what the ACLU called "garden-variety criminals." The provision not
only permits the FBI to seize records from more kinds of businesses; it
also forbids businesses from informing their clients about the seizures.

In that respect, it is comparable to a particularly controversial section
of the PATRIOT Act permitting the FBI to seek an order for library records
for an "investigation to protect against international terrorism or
clandestine intelligence activities" and imposing a gag order on
librarians, who are prohibited from telling anyone that the FBI demanded
the records. Librarians and civil-liberties groups have sued the
government to have that section declared unconstitutional.

"The more checks and balances against government abuse are eroded, the
greater that abuse," said the ACLU's Edgar. "We're going to regret these
initiatives down the road."