Augmentation: Patriot's Act

2003"

Hello friends.

Having crippled the Constitution so badly with the scandalous "USA Patriot Act of 2001," the executive branch is apparently planning new legislation to more-or-less finish it off altogether with a "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." For those of us who have been optimistically lobbying and/or waiting for Congress and the judicial to begin to scale back the Patriot Act, this is pretty devastating.

The following link is to the transcript of a recent Bill Moyers show that exposes the new legislation. (The rest of the mainstream media (except the Washington Post) seem to be ignoring this situation.) See below for information on the Center for Public Integrity, to which the draft proposal was leaked.

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript206_full.html

Here are links provided by the Moyers show, constituting a nice digest of Patriot Act abuses:

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html

Here is the text of the government's proposed legislation draft (a big download):

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/patriot2-hi.pdf

This is the astonishing DOJ response to the leak and the (limited) hubbub: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/03-082-opa.pdf

The Washington Post covered the leak, providing a relatively terrifying summary:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42267-2003Feb7.html

The "Email Activist" puts it into a good big fat draconian context. It's worth the read:

http://www.theemailactivist.org/newKGB.htm

Thanks to that website for the following:

"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

- Hermann Goering

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: 'Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.'"

- John Ashcroft

The proposed legislation was leaked to the Center for Public Integrity, whose analysis is here:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

An excerpt:

"Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution, reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation 'raises a lot of serious concerns. It's troubling that they have gotten this far along and they've been telling people there is nothing in the works.' This proposed law, he added, 'would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive "suspicion," create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.'"

And an excerpt from "Now with Bill Moyers," with the show's senior Washington correspondent Roberta Baskin and Chuck Lewis, the Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity:

LEWIS: I got a phone call from someone who said, "are you interested in legislation involving national security and surveillance and secrecy and those kind of issues?"

BASKIN: When you got it and read it what went through your mind?

LEWIS: I got it. I read it. Holy moly. I was incredulous really about the document. I realized this is a pretty historic piece of legislation. This isn't just another bill.

BASKIN: What surprised Chuck Lewis was this document, leaked to him by a confidential source and shared exclusively with NOW. It's a Justice Department draft of a law called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act. It has enormous implications for everyone's civil liberties and for national security. Yet only a few in Washington have even laid eyes on it.

LEWIS: The reason the Justice Department I think wants to keep it under wraps is, they know it's a hot potato. They know it's controversial and they want to keep it quiet for as long as possible until the right precise moment.

BASKIN: And that moment is when?

LEWIS: When we're at war with Iraq.

BASKIN: In wartime, public opinion often favors national security over civil liberties - which is what this draft legislation appears to do - expanding law enforcement and intelligence gathering, reducing judicial oversight of surveillance, even authorizing secret arrests.

Let's lobby, and heavily.

In solidarity,

Scott.