I spent a few hours Tuesday afternoon reading the USA Patriot
Act, all 634 kilobytes of it. I found it on Electronic Frontier
Foundation’s website, www.eff.org, but many privacy rights groups
have posted it.
I spent a few hours Tuesday afternoon reading the USA Patriot Act, all 634 kilobytes of it. I found it on Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website, www.eff.org, but many privacy rights groups have posted it.
I wanted to read it because I had heard so many bad things about it: how law enforcement’s powers for surveillance and investigation have been vastly expanded, how the government can now snoop into your Internet access, how they can designate your garden club as a terrorist organization and come after you, and so forth and so on.
So I read it. And I advise all Americans to do the same. I would especially like to hear from a banker in regard to the money laundering provisions, because economics and money always put me to sleep, and I’m afraid I may have missed something critical.
My basic question in reading the Act was: Can the Patriot Act be used against law-abiding Americans?
The flip answer is, of course. History is rife with examples of laws being misused and abused, incidents of over-zealous government bureaucrats reinterpreting laws to seize power and property. Even here and now, in sunny California, the Department of Education is trying to re-interpret the compulsory state attendance law to outlaw homeschooling. (Why they want to spend money chasing down and then educating homeschoolers in budget crunch times is a good question.)
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has, ironically, reinterpreted the First Amendment to prohibit schoolchildren from speaking the words “under God,” thus practicing a double-whammy on their rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.
But I digress.
So, granted: inane justices and bureaucrats can run rampant regardless.
But what does the Patriot Act actually say?
For one thing, it condemns acts of violence against Muslim-Americans and Sikhs. In fact, it spends more ink in condemning discrimination against Muslim- and Arab-Americans than it spends in condemning the atrocity of September 11, 2001.
Secondly, if I am reading it right, two-thirds of the Act, the surveillance provisions and money laundering provisions, are specifically addressed to acts by foreign nationals: aliens, foreign intelligence agents, and international terrorists. This is all right with me. I think non-citizens who want all the civil rights of citizens should become citizens.
Several places in the Act specifically state that Constitutional protections for free speech and property rights remain in force. Several places specifically exempt “United States persons” from, say, surveillance.
The only place where I saw American citizens included were the provisions that address terrorist acts.
“Whoever” wrecks a mass transportation vehicle, uses biological agents or toxins, harbors a terrorist either knowingly or when he should reasonably be expected to know, sabotages a nuclear facility — these and other acts are terrorist acts, and being an American citizen when you commit them is no defense. This is all right with me, also.
Of particular interest to me was Section 215, which the American Library Association is so upset about, which the Santa Clara Library System is fretting over. Curiously, the section does not refer to libraries. It does specifically say that a United States person cannot be investigated for activities protected by the First Amendment, and that a judge has to order the release of the information.
So, while I agree that the Patriot Act lends itself to abuse, I also feel that the signs posted in the Santa Cruz library system are mostly a matter of political partisanship.
If the Santa Clara Library System feels obligated to post signs, they should be much more honest and complete in their portrayal of the situation. They could just post the whole Act. It would make relatively cheap wallpaper.
Or they could state something such as: “Warning: Although the library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the USA Patriot Act, records of your Internet use and the books and tapes you borrow may be obtained by federal agents if you are a foreign national, and a judge decides that you may be conspiring to commit terrorist acts. Questions should be directed to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, all of whom voted for the Act.”
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and a former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.
