The Anti-Patriot Act

The UnPATRIOTIC Act

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." Edward R. Murrow

"A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."- Sandra Day O'Connor in response to a case involving the PATRIOT Act.

Under section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act (H.R. 1362) any person or persons in possession of this information can be imprisoned under "domestic terrorism" and detained without a trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Typical of the government's Nazi-like propaganda matrix, the so-called USA PATRIOT Act is anything but patriotic. Make no mistake, the PATRIOT Act is the most harmful document to freedom and liberty in this country. Muslim terrorists do not pose a tenth of the threat that this piece of treasonous legislation poses to the American way of life. It effectively repeals the Bill of Rights to our Constitution, replacing them with all-out martial law.

Habeas Corpus has been indefinitely suspended under the PATRIOT Act, as just about anyone can be labeled an "enemy combatant" or a "material witness" and thrown in prison indefinitely without charges being filed or a right to a trial. By possessing this material on your computer, you can be labeled a"domestic terrorist " and imprisoned with the keys thrown away under the USA PATRIOT Act.

The standard for a warrant has been greatly diminished under this Act, as the Constitutional threshold of "probable cause" has been diminished, and Federal investigators can literally write their own warrants.

Touted by our government as an essential tool for combating terrorism (fighting terrorism with terrorism,) the Patriot Act should better be labeled as a tool for terrorism against the public waged by the government. Its lightning-fast passage just a month after 9-11, amidst a mysterious D.C. anthrax scare traced to a US military facility, suggests that the Act had been written long before 9-11, and that those that passed it never read it for fear of their lives.

Not since the oppression of King George III and the Writs of Assistance Act have the American colonies been forced to endure open-ended search warrants written by the police themselves, without the over site of a Federal Judge. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI can literally write themselves warrants ("national security letters") to search your internet records, banking records, medical records, library records, personal property, etc., and the institutions that they probe are not allowed under the Act to alert you that you are under investigation. You could be under investigation now under the PATRIOT Act and you would never know it.

Under the "sneak and peak" provision of the PATRIOT Act, the government can break into your home when you aren't there, steal what they want and never alert you to this act or give your property back. Section 213 of the Patriot Act allows notice of search warrants to be delayed for an indefinite “reasonable time.”

One might think that victims of such abuse could turn to the media and expose it publicly, but the PATRIOT Act makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for the recipient of such a self-written warrant to tell anyone that they have received such a warrant. The PATRIOT Act even makes it a crime to go into court and tell what the government has done to him or her. Thousands may have disappeared from our streets under this Act, but we would never know it, and the government can pretend like it never happened with the help of the gag provisions under the PATRIOT Act.

The truth stands alone, and needs no promotion. Like the First Amendment to our Constitution, if the merits of the PATRIOT Act were real, then a government propaganda campaign would be unnecessary. It would be as plain as the nose on your face. It is easy to tell a lie. When you see it endlessly promoted, it most likely is not the truth, for the truth is evidence unto itself. A liar must always propagandize and promote his lies in order to bury the truth (the doctrine of black ops.) Like 1 plus 1 equals 2, the truth is self-evident.

Our beloved government has, of course, waged a propaganda campaign against the critics of this Act with its pathetic and misleading web siteLife and Liberty.gov. Within this web site, the government quotes itself by quoting its propaganda arm the USA Today,

Zero. That's the number of substantiated USA PATRIOT Act civil liberties violations. Extensive congressional oversight found no violations. Six reports by the Justice Department's independent Inspector General, who is required to solicit and investigate any allegations of abuse, found no violations. Intense public scrutiny has yet to find a single civil liberty abuse. Despite many challenges, no federal court has declared unconstitutional any of the PATRIOT Act provisions Congress is renewing.

Reality: The Patriot Act has been abused several times. The ACLU detailed these abuses in a 10-page letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, dated April 4, 2005. Typical of the trickery of government propaganda, the above statement is extremely misleading. Inherent within the Patriot Act is a permanent gag order that prevents anyone involved from disclosing that they are being charged, arrested, or investigated by the government under the Patriot Act. With this kind of secrecy, the government can pretend that nothing unseemly is going on, and then post a statement to that effect on its web site for the idiots to digest.

Brandon Mayfield is a Portland, Oregon resident who is a convert to Islam and an attorney. Mayfield was wrongly accused by the government of involvement in the Madrid bombing as a result of evidence, including mistaken fingerprint identification, that fell apart after the FBI re-examined its case following its arrest and detention on Mayfield on a material witness warrant. Attorney General Gonzales acknowledged before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Section 218 of the Patriot Act was implicated in the secret search of Mayfield’s house. FBI admitted that it entered Mayfield’s house without a warrant based on criminal probable cause and copied four computer drives, digitally photographed sever documents, seized ten DNA samples and took approximately 335 digital photographs of Brandon Mayfield’s home.

Tariq Ramadan is regarded by many as Europe’s leading moderate Muslim intellectuals. Time Magazine named Ramadan among the Top 100 Innovators of the 21st Century. The government revoked Ramadan’s visa to teach at the University of Notre Dame under Section 411 of the Patriot Act, which permits the government to exclude non-citizens from the country if in the government’s view they have “used [their] position of prominence to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or to persuade others to support terrorist activity.” Consequently, an individual who discusses politics that a terrorist organization may adopt as its own viewpoints may be excluded from the United States, even if the individual does not support terrorist activity. As such, the government can essentially use this provision to deny admission to those whose political views it disfavors. There is no doubt that Ramadan uses his position of prominence to espouse his political beliefs. Notably, Ramadan, who denounces the use of violence in the name of Islam, had already been granted a visa after undergoing an extensive security clearance process and had previously been permitted to enter the country on numerous occasions.

In another bizarre case, Adam McGaughey, the Web master of a site for fans of the television show "Stargate SG-1," was accused of computer fraud and copyright infringement. The FBI used self-written warrants under the PATRIOT Act to obtain information from the internet service provider for his site. Hmm, I don't think that this has anything to do with terrorism?

The FBI used the PATRIOT Act to seize financial records from the owners of a strip club in Nevada. Federal agents were looking for evidence of bribery and money laundering. They also used self-written PATRIOT Act warrants to gather evidence against two stockbrokers connected to the same strip club.

A professor at the University of Buffalo was accused by the FBI of bio terrorism, when the FBI confiscated evidence of bacteria cultures, books, computers, etc., from his home (he was a professor and had this equipment as part of his job) without a warrant und er... you guessed it: the PATRIOT Act. How did the FBI learn of this bio terrorist? His wife dropped dead of a heart attack and the police noticed the equipment in his home when they came to inspect the body.

We've all heard of the several cases where "enemy combatants" (Jose Padilla) have been locked away without a trial or official charges being brought. Thousands have turned up missing from the streets that we have not heard about.

Six soccer players from Lackawanna, New York were coerced by prosecutors, threatening to use the "material witness" clause of the PATRIOT Act, into accepting sentences well out of proportion to their crime. "The Luckawanna six," as they came to be known, were all Arab Americans, five of which were born here. They were accused of aiding and abetting terrorists, while on a trip to Afghanistan because they listened to Muslim clerics talk about America. The judge rejected the prosecution's argument: "We must never adopt an 'end justifies the means' philosophy by claiming that our democratic Constitutional principles must be temporarily furloughed or put on hold in cases involving alleged terrorism in order to preserve our democracy. To do so would result in victory for the terrorists." Clearly without evidence for a conviction, what did the prosecutors do? They threatened the defendants with imprisonment for life, without a trial, by being labeled enemy combatants, if they did not plead guilty and accept the sentence of five years in prison. The defendants and their lawyers knew that they weren't bluffing because it had been done before countless times, so they accepted five years in prison. This is the first time in recent U.S. history where defendants were threatened, not with conviction of a crime, but with being imprisoned for life, while being convicted of no crime at the whim of a tyrant king (President.)

Recently, the Patriot Act has been used in illegal cockfighting investigations:

"Just after midnight on May 13, 2004, a small team of FBI agents crept into the legendary Del Rio Cockfighting Pit in Cocke County.

The illegal gambling arena was closed, and agents were able to copy a computer hard drive before slipping away. They didn’t notify the property’s then-owner, Michael Maynard of Hot Springs, N.C., of the search for another three months." full story

A number of other examples are also listed in the ACLU’s letter. The Justice Department largely confirmed the substance of these examples in its response to the ACLU letter, dated April 26, 2005, while denying that the examples listed were “abuses.” The Office of Inspector General of the Department of Justice is actively investigating the Brandon Mayfield case.

The extent of Patriot Act abuse is still unknown because of excessive secrecy enshrouding its use. For example, both special document FBI document snoop orders, called “national security letters,” (expanded by section 505 of the Patriot Act) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) document orders (expanded by section 215 of the Act), include permanent “gag” provisions. These automatic secrecy orders prohibit recipients from telling anyone they have received the order or letter to produce documents that include their customers’ private information.

According to the government, no part of the PATRIOT Act has been declared unconstitutional by our courts. One has to wonder where the government gets this stuff? At least two sections of the Patriot Act have been declared unconstitutional by our courts.

In Doe v. Ashcroft, a federal district court struck down a “national security letter” records power expanded by the section 505(a) of the Patriot Act, noting that the failure to provide any explicit right for a recipient to challenge a such a broad national security letter search order power violated the Fourth Amendment.

In Humanitarian Law Project v. Ashcroft, the court held that specific phrases in Title 18 Section 2339A, as amended by the Patriot Act section 805(a)(2)(B), violated First Amendment free speech rights and Fifth Amendment due process rights.

More government perpetuated myths about the Patriot Act:

Myth: It is used soley for the presecution of the War on Terror.

Reality: Obviously, cockfighting, strip clubs, drugs, etc., have nothing to do with the so-called "War on Terror."

Myth: The PATRIOT Act has facilitated in the prosecution of 400 terrorists.

Reality: Where? If this were true then the government would be all over the media outlets reporting the details and facts of these cases in order to bolster their case for the PATRIOT Act and its "War on Terror." Instead, the few that they have reported on have turned out to be frauds. Cases that, like the "Lackawanna Six," showed the abuses of the PATRIOT Act rather than its benefits. Most of the abuses listed above were originally touted by our news media as major successes in the "War on Terror." When the cases fell apart and their true natures became apparent, you never heard about it.

Conclusion

The Fourth Amendment, Due process of law, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments have been the stalwart of Western Democracy. To see these sacred rights trampled afoot by the President and his tyrannical measures is repugnant to a free society. It is clear, we are no longer free.

The Faustian argument that you can secure your safety by giving your freedom and liberty to the government is a false one. Anytime the government claims that it needs new laws for your benefit, run for your lives, because they are about to destroy your liberty, for the government never does anything but for itself. Just ask yourself this question, if the old laws didn't work or went un enforced, what use is the making of new laws?

The State; Immigration Attorney for 7 Detainees Lashes Out at INS; Lawyer says the Patriot Act has been applied unevenly, resulting in 'atrocious and inhumane' treatment.

For more information on the USA PATRIOT Act visit these sites: http://action.aclu.org/reformthepatriotact/facts.html

http://fixpatriotact.org/NewspaperArticles.html