Patriots against the Patriot Act, page 3

Before the Bush admin crooks are ever subjected to the provisions of the Patriot Act, I suspect it will be applied to many more categories of non-terrorist criminals and non-criminals.

Some weeks ago there was discussion about whether any particular rights were going to be eroded by the legislation and the investigative powers given to authorities. The evidence is mounting that the law is being used to pursue may avenues not related to terrorism, so that even if you are not related to or know any terrorists at all, your are subject to being caught in the web if they want to look at you for any reason.

www.tribnet.com...

Patriot Act not just for terror
ERIC LICHTBLAU; The New York Times

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.

The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said.

Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals - terrorists or otherwise. But critics of the administration's antiterrorism tactics assert that such use of the law is evidence the administration has sold the American public a false bill of goods, using terrorism as a guise to pursue a broader law enforcement agenda.....

(THE POLICE STATE, THAT IS...)

.... A new Justice Department report, given to members of Congress this month, also cites more than a dozen cases that are not directly related to terrorism. In them, federal authorities have used their expanded power to investigate individuals, initiate wiretaps and other surveillance, or seize millions in tainted assets.

For instance, the ability to secure nationwide warrants to obtain e-mail and electronic evidence "has proved invaluable in several sensitive nonterrorism investigations," including the tracking of an unidentified fugitive and an investigation into a computer hacker who stole a company's trade secrets, the report said....

.... The authorities have also used toughened penalties under the law to press charges against a lovesick 20-year-old woman from Orange County, Calif., who planted threatening notes aboard a Hawaii-bound cruise ship she was traveling on with her family in May.

The woman, who said she made the threats to try to return home to her boyfriend, was sentenced this week to two years in federal prison because of a provision in the Patriot Act on the threat of terrorism against mass transportation systems......

....Customs officials say they have used their expanded authority to open at least nine investigations into Latin American officials suspected of laundering money in the United States and to seize millions of dollars from overseas bank accounts in many cases unrelated to terrorism....

....A guide to a Justice Department employee seminar last year on financial crimes, for instance, said: "We all know that the USA Patriot Act provided weapons for the war on terrorism. But do you know how it affects the war on crime as well?"....

Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal group that has been critical of Ashcroft, said the Justice Department's public assertions struck him as misleading and perhaps dishonest.

"What the Justice Department has really done," he said, "is to get things put into the law that have been on prosecutors' wish lists for years. They've used terrorism as a guise to expand law enforcement powers in areas that are totally unrelated to terrorism."

...The terrorism law has already drawn sharp opposition from those who believe it gives the government too much power to intrude on people's privacy in pursuit of terrorists.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "Once the American public understands that many of the powers granted to the federal government apply to much more than just terrorism, I think the opposition will gain momentum."....