Might as well throw the damn bill of rights away.Follow

as much as i truly dislike this addministraition, i really have no problem with the patriot act itself. really, the only people who need to be worried about it are people with something to hide.

and our law enforcment agencies do really need to be able to conduct an investigation, and get information without the entire legal system getting involved. the faster they can disciminate information, the safer we will be. investigate me, i dont care. really, i dont.

what does bother me though is the right to detain someone indefinatly without bringing charges, and without the right to representation. the potential for abuse is staggering.

Actually, no, not at all.

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies once again have the power to infiltrate and surveil peaceful political and religious organizations without having to show any probable cause of wrongdoing.

After the arrest of the "Portland Seven," a group of seven Islamic fundamentalists who were planning to go over to Afghanistan and fight with the Taliban, the Portland Islamic Center found out that an FBI informant had infiltrated their worship center and been secretly recording conversations that took place there. Now, understand, only those seven people had "something to hide" but an entire worship center's right to free speech was violated under the Patriot Act.

Now, the Portland Islamic Center is one of the plaintiff's in the MCA v. DoJ lawsuit which asserts that the notion that law enforcement agencies can infiltrate and spy upon an organization, no matter how law abiding, has a "chilling effect" on the First Amendment rights of free speech and association. Which is does. Attendence dropped off at the Center by something like 40%. Not because people had anything to hide, but because they didn't like the idea that they could be spied up at their worship services, or that their financial records could be subpoenaed just because they happened to know someone who knew someone who had something to hide. One woman at the Center was investigated because the wife of one of the Portland Seven had once babysat for her, and thus there was a cancelled check made out to the woman.

The MCA is the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor. This is an organization that helps immigrants from the Middle East adapt to life in the United States by helping them find shelter and employment and medical care. They rely upon charitable donations, and those donations have dropped off drastically because, again, people are afraid of being spied upon just for exercising their right to free association.

Or perhaps you have heard of the case of Brandon Mayfield? He is an attorney who once represented one of the Portland Seven in a custody hearing, who was falsely arrested due to a "fingerprint misidentification" in the case of the train bombing in Madrid. There were over 30 matches that came up for that particular fingerprint that was misidentified, but the investigation immediately centered in on Mayfield even though his was not the closest match they had. Why? Because he had converted to Islam and married an Egyptian woman and because of a very flimsy connection to one of the Portland Seven.

The FBI conducted AT LEAST three "sneak and peek" searches of Mayfield's home, none of which he was ever notified about until after his arrest and release. The reason he knew there had been searches is because when they left for the day, they would leave the blinds up, but come home to find them down. They would leave the door deadbolted and come home to find the deadbolt undone. Take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you knew your home had been invaded in that way?

Oh, the FBI's "probable cause" for his arrest included "maps" of Spain which were actually pictures his daughter had drawn of their vacation in Spain for a school project. Here, again, was a man with nothing to hide...do you want to tell him he has nothing to be worried about when the FBI is secretly entering his home while he is away and never notifying him of the fact?

Under the Patriot Act, you can also become the subject of an investigation based upon the books you check out from the library or buy in the bookstore, in a frontal violation of the First Amendment. The list goes on. Don't be so blaise about the powers that the Patriot Act grants law enforcement. The Patriot Act gives law enforcement such sweeping powers not because they actually need them, but because it's easy for them to take such a blunt force approach to investigating possible terrorist activities than to effectively and efficiently use the completely adequate powers they already had. It was passed because in the panic following 9/11, people wanted to see the government make some gesture that would make them feel safe again, and no one stopped to think of the ramifications. Well, when your church is infiltrated and spied upon, or your activist group that protests the incarceration of prisoners without speedy trial ends up being secretly recorded, then talk about not being afraid unless you have something to hide.

edited cuz I had my attorney's mixed up


Edited, Fri Jul 22 03:58:24 2005 by Ambrya

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies once again have the power to infiltrate and surveil peaceful political and religious organizations without having to show any probable cause of wrongdoing.
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my point is, what does it realy matter? if you are not doing anything illegal, they will pop in, have a looksie, and be gone.

yes, they can pull all your paperwork and go through your whole life without consent, but so what? the only people who need to worrie are the people doing something wrong.

and personelly, i think that is a good thing. the thought someone is watching my back is a reward that far outweighs my personel misgivings about some stranger going through my tax reciepts, my garbage, my bills, or poping in unannounced at the church i attend.

this needs to be done if you want law enforcement to have any hope of actually PREVENTING a crime as opposed to just cleaning up after the fact. the patriot act is one of the few good things that has come out of this addministraition. and even though i consider myself a liberal, i would not be opposed to using this law on civil crime as well.

the only people who need to worrie are the people doing something wrong. if they spy on a politician for instance, they are ALL criminals to some extent, the more they toss in jail the better off we are.

i support the act. irreguardless of the invasion of privacy, in todays world it is a necessary evil to tip the balance toward law enforcement. criminals COUNT ON being able yo move around freely. lets give them something they DIDNT COUNT ON, an FBI agent going throught their garbage looking for the reciept for the bomb making material they plan on using on YOU.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just feel like down the road, they will e using the Patriot Act to pin things on innocents. Say, if there's been some crime committed and the public outcry is big enough, and they're unable to find the true criminals, I can see them using this to appease the masses. (yes, I realize things like this are already done, but it might even be on a bigger scale now).

Or, they will use this to cover up some of their less favorable activities. (once again, I'm Ms. Obvious)

The Portland Seven? Were they in any way associated with the Seattle Seven?

Just a hypothetical question for you all.

Would you support a bill in which the government offered to install/upgrade security cameras in various commercial locations for free, as long as they then have unfettered access to the video shot by those cameras?

I know, it's random, just from something I read (fictional).

and can there be any freedom w/o privacy?

varus

Well, except when a person in charge of, say, the FBI tosses all of one side in jail and not the other...effectively selecting who to dig up the dirt on and unduely influencing, in principle, all branches of government.

One of the most damning things about Iran's democracy is that candidates for office (at least president - but I assume all offices, I don't know) are reviewed by the religious leaders and many (as I recall, it is usually most) are rejected - prevented from even running.

Obviously we aren't there yet.

A serious problem with the Patriot act is that, not needing warrents, they can go fishing. Instead of going to a library and asking for all the records of person X (with a warrent - perhaps issued by a secret court) they can show up and ask for everyone who has checked out a particular book.

This is not nearly as serious as detaining US citizens without charge, without access to legal protection, without any due process of any kind - indefinately, or until the "end of the war" on a method used since biblical times.

However, as long as the detainees don't look white, the American public doesn't seem to care about that.

We need more privacy, not less.

More freedom of the press, not less.

The lesson from 9-11 is to get the various intelligence agencies to talk to each other: they did have the information. Watering down our rights may have given them more data, but if they can't share what they've got who cares?

And in the end, this has largely been ignored.

Amen.

No one will ever be truly safe. It's impossible. I'd rather be free and risk possible death than live what's left of my life in fear and "bound" by thier rules.

Actually, no I didn't. The basis of the MCA v. Ashcroft/DoJ case is that the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional because people will not feel at liberty to exercise their right to free speech and free association if they believe they could be, at any given time, spied upon. That is what is meant by the verbiage contained in the lawsuit, that several provisions of the PATRIOT Act have a "chilling effect" on the exercise of the First Amendment rights of free speech and free association.

And since when is a worship center an "enemy" to be infiltrated?

These people had done absolutely nothing wrong. They merely had the misfortune to have attended services at the same mosque as some of the Portland Seven. And the PATRIOT Act absolves the FBI of showing any probable cause of wrongdoing, reducing the secret FISA court to a rubber stamp rather than the judicial overview of covert surveillance it's supposed to be.

For those of you who are unconcerned with the possible abuse of the FBI's newly restored surveillance latitude, keep in mind that historically, the FBI has very much been a dirty tricks squad used to keep tabs on lawful citizens who just happened to express views the government didn't like.

Aside from McCarthy's use of the FBI to manufacture "evidence" of communist sympathies in people who, conveniently enough, happened to be his political opponents, they have also:

Sent an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King Jr. attempting to blackmail him into committing suicide or face public exposure of his sexual activities.

Placed an informant within the Black Panthers organization who attempted to convince the Black Panthers leadership to produce and distribute a coloring book that depicted African Americans instructing their children to rise up and do harm to white Americans. When the Black Panthers passed on the opportunity, the FBI printed the coloring book themselves and distributed it throughout white middle America as the Black Panther Coloring Book, to discredit the Black Panthers message by outraging the white majority.

Discredited a popular white actress who was too politically outspoken by planting a gossip column article that the father of her child was a Black Panther.

The list goes on: churches, synagogues, and political activism organizations of all sorts were infiltrated and spied upon for decades, until the public became aware of the FBIs abuse of its powers after Watergate. Jimmy Carter's Attorney General then issued an internal FBI mandate that agents were no longer to spy upon religious and political groups merely for the purpose of gathering intelligence on their activities when they were under no suspicion of criminal activity.

Guess what the first thing former Attorney General John Ashcroft did after 9/11 was? Repeal that edict. So even though the PATRIOT Act clearly states that the FBI is not to appeal for warrants from the FISA court based solely upon a person's exercise of his or her right to free speech, Ashcroft opened the door to allow the FBI to do precisely that.

The worst tragedy here is that we have learned nothing from history.



Edited, Fri Jul 22 17:11:16 2005 by Ambrya

That place of worship did no such thing.

Mecca started shooting missles at us? I need to start getting my news next to the beef sticks and tampons in the express checkout lane.