OT - Asscroft Takes Offensive Against Critics

BS. See below.

US: Prosecutors Increasingly Turn To Patriot ActMedia Awareness Project

US: Prosecutors Increasingly Turn To Patriot Act URL:

Newshawk: chip Pubdate: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 Source: Oklahoman, The (OK) Copyright: 2003 The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Contact: snipped-for-privacy@oklahoman.com Website: Details: Author: David B. Caruso, Associated Press Writer

PROSECUTORS INCREASINGLY TURN TO PATRIOT ACT

PHILADELPHIA -- 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, 2001, 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 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.

"These are appropriate uses of the statute," Cassella said. "If we can use the statute to get money back for victims, we are going to do it."

The complaint that anti-terrorism legislation is being used to go after people who aren't terrorists is just the latest in a string of criticisms.

More than 150 local governments have passed resolutions opposing the law as an overly broad threat to constitutional rights.

Critics also say the government has gone too far in charging three U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, a power presidents wield during wartime that is not part of the Patriot Act. The government can detain individuals indefinitely without allowing them access to a lawyer.

And Muslim and civil liberties groups have criticized the government's decision to force thousands of mostly Middle Eastern men to risk deportation by registering with immigration authorities.

Some of the restrictions on government surveillance that were erased by the Patriot Act had been enacted after past abuses -- including efforts by the FBI to spy on civil rights leaders and anti-war demonstrators during the Cold War.

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."

- Lyndon Johnson, 1966.

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

- William Pitt, 1783.

"Fire BAD! Oooh oooh OOOH! Fire BURN! MUST BAN FIRE!"

- Grurk, ancestor of Sens. Schumer and Lautenburg (Ashcroft lap-dogs), 50,000 B.C.

Um, what exactly is the problem with this?? They cut through a lot of bureaucratic and diplomatic BS to recover the money stolen from innocent people by convicted crooks. Sure seems like a good idea to me.

Now this one is just plain wrong. A pipe bomb is NOT a "weapon of mass destruction", and refering to it as such taints the whole process of rooting true WMD's. On top of which, it was completely unnecessary to do so. There are already plenty of laws to go after creeps who used pipe bombs.

"This American Life", "Secret Government"

Act Three. Secret Wiretaps from a Secret Court. For over two decades, there's been a secret court in the United States called the FISA court (short for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Its job is to authorize wiretaps on possible foreign spies and foreign agents. In 24 years, it has never turned down a government request for a wiretap, as best as any outsider can tell--until this year. This past summer the court said issued an opinion that said Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department were going way too far in their zeal for wiretaps. It cited 75 cases in which the Justice Department tried to sneak around rules to protect Americans from surveillance. Blue Chevigny reports on attempts to loosen up the rules on who the government spies on here in the U.S., and on this first-ever glimpse inside this secret court. (15 minutes)

The entire show can be heard at

This is all part of my latest plan to take over the world.

Step 1: Get myself appointed Attorney General.

Step 2: Get a series of acts passed in the name of combatting terrorism such that basic civil liberties are suspended and anybody may be arrested and detained indefinitely.

Step 3: Arrest and detain everybody except myself and my cerebrally challenged companion, Pinky.

Step 4: With everybody arrested and detained indefinitely, there will be nobody left to repeal the acts passed in Step 1, I shall be the de facto ruler of the USA.

Step 5: Nuke everybody else.

Result: I have taken over the world.

The sad thing is, most people think this is a joke.

The Brain.

**PLEASE** turn off your HTML when posting...

Also in response to being able to snoop through library records, he decalred that harmless since they haven't done that. So then why allow it if they don't do it?

meanwhile, I'm off to my library to check out every subversive book I can find. Just to fill their databases with useless garbage...

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

Wise statement. It would require that most laws of the past century be torn down. Including a LOT of what Johnson was responsible for...

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

How is simple telemarketing fraud something that we need intrusive anti-terrorist legislation to fight?

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

Common Bob, think about it. Interfering with commerce and the collection of taxes in a capitalistic society is obviously a terrorist act. Now when someone has a problem with an auction or a purshase at Target, they can file a terrorist complaint and have the sucker thrown in jail.

Joel. phx

File bankruptcy, spend 10 years in a federal prison in a Louisiana swap prison. Lie on your income tax,... lets not go there.

I'm not defending the entire "patriot act", just this particular use of this particular part of it.

It is about justifying police ease of job and employment, not about mere citizens rights. I know you can see that.

Jerry

What constitution?

You are actually defending the RESULTS not the PROCESS, right?

The process is way afield of constitutional.

Jerry

Your ejection charges are so big you need to put them in pieces of pipe?

Yeah, really...

-dave w

If we were to apply this same logic to rocketry, we can assert that our detractors of fomenting false "hysteria" about the hobby. Since we haven't misused our right to own and fly rockets.

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (RayDunakin) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m07.aol.com:

The problem is the notion that the end justifies the means. If they can use an anti-terrorism law to circumvent due process in this case, that only leads the way to misapplying the same tactics and laws to more and more situations. Are you ready to be tried as a terrorist for running a red light?

The same is true for fraud.

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (RayDunakin) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m23.aol.com:

Just because you believe someone is guilty of a crime is not justification for abusing due process or violating the individual's civil rights. What happens when you're the one that's believed guilty?

Frankly, Ray, I'm surprised at your response based on other postings I've seen of yours.

The problem with this is that America is founded on Freedom (please note capital 'F'), not Tyranny.

If the telemarketers committed fraud, then they should be tried on the grounds of having committed fraud. If they have committed tax evasion, try them for tax evasion. If they have broken international laws, try them for breaking those laws. If we don't have 'reciprocal agreements' with other countries, then we need to work towards reaching such agreements.

Further, do you really think that this will 'solve' the problem? If we simply seize assets from the banks overseas that have branches here, how does that 'help' the overall situation? What will likely happen is either the banks will fight us (causing massive tie-ups in the legal system), or contact their respective governments (creating massive diplomatic problems), or pull their business from the US (causing economic disruptions), or will raise their rates and have insurance cover it (also causing economic disruption). In the 'short term', you seem to believe this will help, but in the long term, there's really no question that it creates more problems than it solves.

Finally, I'm so tired of laws being misused like this (used for something other than their original intent). Everybody seems to want to take the so-called "easy way out", rather than do what is RIGHT. If a person of one race attacks a person of another race, that's assault, not a "hate crime". If a woman says 'No' during sex, that isn't 'rape' in the same sense that a guy who holds a knife to someone's throat while forcing himself on her, but these days, "rape is rape". Because we don't want to 'think' about anything, we have 'zero-tolerance' nonsense, so that a kid who takes an aspirin to school gets the same suspension that a kid who gets caught with a joint does.

Prosecute people for their crimes, while protecting the FREEDOM of citizens. That is what the purpose of the Constitution is.

David Erbas-White

Kind of reminds me of Brother Theodore, a comedian that used to be on Late Night with David Letterman show years ago.

One evening he unveiled his plan to be the first dictator of the United States and how that was a 'good' thing.

As he explained it, "Evil that fails is evil, but evil that succeeds is good. And I will be good!"