| Posted by fluffy ® , Sep 16,2003,07:46 | MetroBlab |
Sept. 15, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft denounced as "hysteria" the contention by some librarians and civil liberties groups that the FBI can use a new anti-terror law to snoop into Americans' reading habits.
In a speech Monday to an American Restaurant Association conference, Ashcroft said people are being wrongly led to believe that libraries have been "surrounded by the FBI," with agents "dressed in raincoats, dark suits and sunglasses. They stop everyone and interrogate everyone like Joe Friday.
"Now, you may have thought with all this hysteria and hyperbole, something had to be wrong," Ashcroft said. "Do we at the Justice Department really care what you are reading? No."
A portion of the Patriot Act, passed shortly after the 2001 terror attacks, gives federal authorities access to library, bookstore and other business records as part of terrorism investigations. Some libraries have begun purging their records more frequently and posting signs warning that the records could be checked by the FBI.
The provision has drawn a legal challenge in a federal lawsuit filed in July by the American Civil Liberties Union and Islamic groups.
Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington office, said library records should be treated differently from those of other businesses because of privacy rights and constitutional free speech protections.
The Justice Department should at least be required to publicly describe how often FBI agents subpoena library records, she said. That information is classified but is reported secretly to Congress twice a year.
"They are not taking this issue seriously, and the American people are upset about this," Sheketoff said. "At least they could give us some idea of the breadth of the problem."
Ashcroft said, however, that subpoenas of library records are closely scrutinized by federal judges, and the FBI, with 11,000 agents, could never begin to monitor the reading habits of millions of library patrons even if it wanted to.
The main reason an FBI agent would want library records is to track use of its publicly available computers, which terrorists have been known to use to communicate, Justice Department officials say. They say use of the power is extremely infrequent.
"The hysteria is ridiculous. Our job is not," Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft's speech followed a recent 16-city tour in which he repeatedly defended the Patriot Act as essential to the war on terror. President Bush asked last week for three new legal tools, including expansion of the "administrative subpoena" that effectively bypasses judicial or grand jury oversight.
| Posted by fluffy ® , Sep 16,2003,07:56 | MetroBlab |
New terror laws used vs. common criminals
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Sept. 14, 2003 | PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.
The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers.
Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.
A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months.
Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
Civil liberties and legal defense groups are bothered by the string of cases, and say the government soon will be routinely using harsh anti-terrorism laws against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."
Prosecutors aren't apologizing.
Attorney General John Ashcroft completed a 16-city tour this week defending the Patriot Act as key to preventing a second catastrophic terrorist attack. Federal prosecutors have brought more than 250 criminal charges under the law, with more than 130 convictions or guilty pleas.
The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, erased many restrictions that had barred the government from spying on its citizens, granting agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic and computer eavesdropping and access private financial data.
Stefan Cassella, deputy chief for legal policy for the Justice Department's asset forfeiture and money laundering section, said that while the Patriot Act's primary focus was on terrorism, lawmakers were aware it contained provisions that had been on prosecutors' wish lists for years and would be used in a wide variety of cases.
In one case prosecuted this year, investigators used a provision of the Patriot Act to recover $4.5 million from a group of telemarketers accused of tricking elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the Canadian lottery. Prosecutors said the defendants told victims they would receive their prize as soon as they paid thousands of dollars in income tax on their winnings.
Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would have had to use international treaties and appeal for help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash, deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they simply seized it from assets held by those banks in the United States.
rest at;
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/09/14/patriot/index.html
| Posted by Hank IV ® , Sep 16,2003,11:50 | MetroBlab |