Perspective: Must we renew the Patriot Act?

What do mandatory drug testing, cigarette taxes and methamphetamine restrictions have to do with protecting America from terrorists?

As far as I can tell, the answer is "nothing." But they nevertheless appear in a 219-page proposed law to renew the Patriot Act that Republicans have scheduled for a vote this week.

A fraction--a mere 16 sections--of the Patriot Act's awesome surveillance powers expire Dec. 31. They expanded secret methods the FBI can use to obtain business records; authorized more information sharing between Internet providers and police; and listed computer hacking as an offense permitting increased eavesdropping.

The Bush administration and congressional Republicans spent last week arguing that speedy approval of the larded-up "conference report" (click for PDF) was necessary to keep America safe. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, "I urge both houses of Congress to act promptly to pass this critical piece of legislation."

The bill will do little to stop an FBI that, according to previously classified documents, has spied on U.S. residents without authorization.

But what Gonzales didn't say was that the conference report has become a political version of a Christmas tree: It's ornamented with dozens of senators' pet projects. The result is a structure so weighty with irrelevant amendments it's nearly twice the size of the original Patriot Act.

Some bizarre (and some relevant) examples follow. The conference report:

• Reduces the amount of contraband cigarettes that qualifies as a federal crime. The number drops from 60,000 cigarettes to 10,000.

• Creates a new federal crime of photographing or videotaping bridges, garages, tracks, warehouses, or other facilities used by railroads, boats, or airplanes--if such recordings were made with the intent of doing harm. Anyone attacking anyone else near such facilities with a weapon--the list includes "a pocket knife with a blade of less than 2 1⁄2 inches in length and a box cutter"--can be punished with stiff prison terms and even the death penalty.

• Increases electronic surveillance of visitors and tourists by ditching a requirement that a surveillance target must be an agent of a "foreign power." Extends electronic monitoring of visitors' and tourists' Internet activities and telephone dialing habits from 90 days to one year.

• Boosts criminal penalties: Possessing methamphetamine for distribution to a minor yields a prison term of up to 20 years. Requires a "feasibility study" of a new federal drug court, and funds mandatory drug testing.

• Increases criminal penalties for smuggling goods into the U.S. from five years to 20 years, and creates an additional crime of exporting them.

• Expands what information the FBI can obtain using a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order asking for telephone or Internet activity. It stresses that the recipient must divulge "any temporarily assigned network address or associated routing or transmission information."

Minor changes to surveillance
Some sections are more relevant to terrorism and FBI oversight. The conference report:

• Requires the Justice Department to prepare a report on its use of "pattern-based data-mining technology"--including how effective the system is and its likely impact on privacy and civil liberties. That requirement does not apply to the Defense Department, which created the Total Information Awareness project.

It's become a political version of a Christmas tree--ornamented with dozens of senators' pet projects.

• Says that only senior FBI officials may request secret FISA orders for certain types of business records. To obtain library patron lists, book sales records, and medical records, rank-and-file FBI agents would need high-level approval.

• Continues to authorize secret search warrants that let police enter your house and leave without notifying you. Notice could still be delayed indefinitely, but Congress would begin to receive an annual report on how many secret searches take place.

• Permits recipients of a "national security letter" demanding documents to "petition" a federal court for permission to talk about it. But there's a long list of conditions that would require a judge to deny the request.

• Lets recipients of a national security letter consult with an attorney. Currently they can't, which has caused one federal judge to conclude that that section of the Patriot Act is unconstitutional.

Limited reforms
Increasing oversight of often-unaccountable police agencies is a welcome development, but the preparation of a few reports must not be confused with meaningful reform.

The conference report will do little to stop an FBI that, according to previously classified documents (click for PDF), has spied on U.S. residents without authorization. Incidents have included obtaining e-mail messages after a warrant expired and conducting an improper physical search.

Nor will the proposed legislation fix the way national security letters (NSLs) are secretly employed to obtain business records on Americans. In addition to credit records and financial information, NSLs let the FBI obtain a list of all Web sites a person visits, a list of a person's e-mail and instant messaging correspondents and other subscriber records.

An article in The Washington Post last month said that the FBI's use of NSLs has leaped a hundredfold in the last few years, with more than 30,000 issued annually. Domestic surveillance of Americans is "exponentially growing," the article said, and it recounted how NSLs were even used to obtain data on library patrons' Web browsing habits.

As the Dec. 31 deadline nears, watch the White House and Republicans crank up the pressure on wavering Senate Democrats.

Fortunately, most Democrats, and a handful of Republican dissenters, are objecting to the legislation and are demanding substantive changes. Some, like Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, are even threatening a filibuster.

Whether Feingold can muster the votes to carry it off is an open question. But it would be fascinating to watch the Bush administration explain why laws involving cigarette taxes, methamphetamine possession, and pocket knives are necessary to protect America in the War on Terror.

Biography
Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's chief political correspondent. He spent more than a decade in Washington, D.C., chronicling the busy intersection between technology and politics. Previously, he was the Washington bureau chief for Wired News, and a reporter for Time.com, Time magazine and HotWired. McCullagh has taught journalism at American University and been an adjunct professor at Case Western University.

More Perspectives

[shrippyshram]

Its not Pork, its better Planning

The items that you list in the first section as either "bizarre" or "relevant" are overall relevant. The only measure in that section which seems to be irrelevant is the methamphetamine crimes items. But this is only because terrorist or terrorist support involvement in methamphetamine crimes is extraordinarily rare. Meth precursor chemicals, sure, but not meth itself.

The rest of the measures all share one thing in common: discouraging and deterring direct and indirect logistical and conspiratorial support for terrorists. Some businesses engaged in the sale of counterfeit cigarettes have been linked to terrorist support. Its commonly believed that terrorists "case" their targets, making the "no casing" provision a no-brainer. Many suspected terrorist come here as students or tourists, not as government attaches as spies did in days of old, making many provisions of the FISA inapplicable to their activity, even though the Patriot Act was designed to make FISA applicable to their activity. And what about smuggling? Increasing the penalty helps to deter--and flip, in the event they are caught--mere support personnel who may not have been assigned or prepared to take the fall or martyr themselves in a campaign. If you aren't a hardcore jihadi, a measure like this might give you second thoughts about being the guy who was "just supposed to pick up the package."

But you know, that's cool. If you want to second guess the professional lawmakers and investigators about why they want or need the tools that they do, based on your broad experience REPORTING on TECH NEWS, you're welcome to. (I often forget the reporters are masters of all trades. I have some free time this afternoon, if you want to come by and tell me how to do my job, too.)

Just don't insinuate that men and women whom you don't know and never will are "power mongering liberty-haters." Media skepticism has gone too far if public servants are now presumed to have nefarious hidden agendas. If that were true, there would be no hope for America.

[hardedge]

Easiest Answer Possible

Yes.

[bcsaxman]

Nothing Worthwhile Is Easy ...

... including answers.

Giving an uncritical "yes" to a law like the Patriot Act ignores the lessons of history, as well as the specific warnings of our Founding Fathers.

To the extent something like this is needed at all, it should be preceded by rigorous debate, written so that it accomodates the freedoms its supposedly intended to protect, and paired with strong oversite of the agencies that want to use it against a largely innocent populace.

If that's all too difficult to manage, than I would approve of only one "easy answer":

No.

No, to the Patriot Act.

[casper2004]

The Patriot Act should have been called the new world order.

I think there is a hidden agenda with the Patriot Act. I feel it was designed to drag the USA to the new world order.

[heystoopid]

Oh well,

Oh well, what price freedom and democracy, at the rate that GOP pad the patriot act with additional draconian sub clauses, soon even the simple act of littering on the sidewalk, will become a felony offence!

[Catgic]

USA Citizen Surveillance Improvement & Reauthorization Act

Replace the term ?Patriot? in the USA Patriot Improvement & Reauthorization Act of 2005 title with ?Citizen Surveillance? to accurately describe the effect Pat Act 2005 legislation will have on U.S. citizens.

If passed as written, it will be Big Bro: 1, Citizens: 0. JP

[KittyAW]

Those Who Initiate Force in Name of Government

The fact that many making comments here in support of the so-called "Patriot Act" is ironic. Would these individuals themselves hack into their neighbor's emails, tap their phones, break into their homes, steal their cars/boats/computers, interfere with their voluntary mutually beneficial transactions, assault them? I suspect that most would immediately say "No" to these activities. But if to do these acts is wrong for one individual against another, what makes it right when an agent of the government does it? Most of these individuals I suspect have never spent time considering this fundamental question. They simply accept the proclamations of some persons who have been voted for by the majority of those voting residents of a location. The voters and the elected are willing to impose their will on others - at the point of gun of enforcers. Were there however, very few willing to actually initiate force, governments would be powerless and would soon wither and die. So, maybe these posters, and their friends who think likewise, are actually among the government enforcers and their direct supporters, or would be willing to take up the guns themselves against their neighbors and initiate force "in the name of government".

The current enforcers, their direct supporters and even those, like certain posters here, who praise and encourage government force are among those with whom I choose to have no voluntary association - and I urge others to do likewise. The tool of social preferencing against government enforcers - and even those who directly or actively support/encourage such initiation of force - can be a powerful tool of social influence. To simply cast a vote against certain politicians is worthless since all seek to physically interfere with/control the actions of others. But a reduction of the numbers of those who would enforce the edicts/laws/regulations of those politicos is really cutting into the power base. http://selfsip.org/focus/preferencing.html


**Kitty Antonik Wakfer

MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting

[James Anderson Merritt]

The challenge of a free society

The terrorists do not hate us for our freedoms, our wealth, or our way of life. If we give up our liberties to enable the government to protect us from terrorists, we are gullible fools who deserve what we get. The riders on the present PATRIOT reauthorization act only go to show how unimportant true homeland security is, and how important control over people's lives and behavior is to our small-minded politicians.

The challenge of the free society that the USA was supposed to be is a challenge for (and to!) government: our government is obliged by the weight of our tradition of liberty, not to mention the so-called "chains of the constitution," to find ways to conduct its business -- including protecting us from invasion, insurrection, and piracy -- without infringing individual rights. IF THERE IS A WAY to get its job done without infringing individual rights, government should choose that path before going down a road that requires "we the people" to surrender any rights or liberties.

So you have to ask yourself: is there anything that government is doing, and could either do differently or quit doing entirely, which leaves us less secure; which enables or encourages terrorists; which can't help but turn others against us?

I think any honest person, looking dispassionately at our government's history of dealing with not only foreigners but also citizens during times of crisis, must agree that there are a LOT of things that government could change about the way it does business, which would not affect American freedoms one bit, but which would noticeably lesson tensions outside and inside the US borders, making us much safer by giving malcontents -- foreign and domestic -- less motivation to take desperate measures such as terrorism.

Why doesn't government try doing some of THOSE things before giving up and concluding that civil rights must be sacrificed for such things as the PATRIOT Act? Why aren't we demanding that they do so, and further demanding accountability from those who fail to put the people's freedoms first?

Unless the people discipline their elected officials -- tossing out those who demonstrate that citizen liberty, secured by strictly limited government, is NOT their primary concern -- we'll keep getting crap like the original PATRIOT Act and this bloated monstrosity of a re-authorization Act.

Don't fall for it. Let the politicians know you won't tolerate this silly game. Let the sunsetting provisions of the PATRIOT Act lapse and behold the world continuing to exist and life going on -- the sky still above our heads and in no danger of falling.

[bdonohue1]

Geek trumps mass media

A very impressive piece, with detail that I hadn't found at cnn,
msnbc, or any other mass media political news outlet. In other
words, a geek at c-net trumped the big mass media boys. I've
posted a link to it at my blog, Daily Revolution.