[FYI] (Fwd) FC: USA PATRIOT update: "Moving toward a police state," by M.Ratner

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Tue, 20 Nov 2001 11:49:43 -0500
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: USA PATRIOT update: "Moving toward a police state," by M.Ratner
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

Text of law:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/usa.act.final.102401.html

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Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 08:19:36 -0800
From: "Jeffrey St. Clair" <sitka@home.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: Ratner On Civil Liberties

Declan--

Thought your readers might be interested in human rights lawyer
Michael Ratner's analysis of the USA Patriot Act and other recent
incursions into the Bill of Rights.

http://www.counterpunch.org/ratner5.html

Best,
Jeff St. Clair
CounterPunch

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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/322/business/Patriot_Act_would_make_
watchdogs_of_firms+.shtml

    Patriot Act would make watchdogs of firms

    By Scott Bernard Nelson, Globe Staff, 11/18/2001

    Ordinary businesses, from bicycle shops to bookstores to bowling
    alleys, are being pressed into service on the home front in the
    war on Under the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President
    Bush late last month, they soon will be required to monitor their
    customers and report ''suspicious transactions'' to the Treasury
    Department - though most businesses may not be aware of this.

    Buried in the more than 300 pages of the new law is a provision
    that ''any person engaged in a trade or business'' has to file a
    government report if a customer spends $10,000 or more in cash.
    The threshold is cumulative and applies to multiple purchases if
    they're somehow related - three $4,000 pieces of furniture, for
    example, might trigger a filing.

    Until now, only banks, thrifts, and credit unions have been
    required to report cash transactions to the Treasury Department's
    Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, under the Bank Secrecy Act
    of 1970. A handful of other businesses, including car dealers and
    pawnbrokers, have to file similar reports with the Internal
    Revenue Service.

    ''This is a big deal, and a big change, for the vast majority of
    American businesses,'' said Joe Rubin, chief lobbyist for the US
    Chamber of Commerce. ''But I don't think anybody realizes it's
    happened.''

    The impact is less clear for consumers, although privacy advocates
    are uncomfortable with the thought of a massive database that
    could bring government scrutiny on innocent people. Immigrants and
    the working poor are the most likely to find themselves in the
    database, since they tend to use the traditional banking system
    the least.

    [...]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55391-2001Nov19.html

    By Dana Milbank
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page A01

    The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have
    dramatically accelerated a push by the Bush administration to
    strengthen presidential powers, giving President Bush a dominance
    over American government exceeding that of other post-Watergate
    presidents and rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt's command.

    On a wide variety of fronts, the administration has moved to seize
    power that it has shared with other branches of government. In
    foreign policy, Bush announced vast cuts in the U.S. nuclear
    arsenal but resisted putting the cuts in a treaty -- thereby
    averting a Senate ratification vote. In domestic policy, the
    administration proposed reorganizing the Immigration and
    Naturalization Service without the congressional action lawmakers
    sought. And in legal policy, the administration seized the
    judiciary's power as Bush signed an order allowing terrorists to
    be tried in military tribunals.

    Those actions, all taken last week, build on earlier Bush efforts
    to augment White House power, including initiatives to limit
    intelligence briefings to members of Congress, take new spending
    authority from the legislature, and expand the executive branch's
    power to monitor and detain those it suspects of terrorism.

    Presidential power ebbs and flows historically and, by necessity,
    typically heightens during times of war because of the need for a
    unifying figure in government. Lyndon B. Johnson gained clout
    under the Tonkin Gulf resolution, as did Roosevelt during World
    War II. The War Powers Act and other reforms by Congress to limit
    presidential power after Watergate made for weaker executives, as
    did the reduced threat from the Soviet Union.

    Now, in the views of many scholars, Bush has restored the
    "Imperial Presidency," a term Arthur Schlesinger Jr. used to
    describe Richard M. Nixon's administration in 1973.

    [...]

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Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 18:22:50 -0600
From: Jon Roland  <jon.roland@constitution.org>
Subject: 2001 Patriot Act echoes 1798 Alien Act

2001 Patriot Act echoes 1798 Alien Act

The controversy arising from the hastily-passed "USA Patriot" Act and
associated presidential executive orders strongly resembles that which
arose from the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, especially the Alien Act
of June 25, 1798,[1] which tried to grant to the president, then John
Adams, the authority to order foreign nationals he deemed "dangerous"
to depart, to imprison them if they did not, to forcibly deport them,
to imprison them if they returned, and to disable their rights to
become citizens. The Act was targeted on French nationals, because
France was attacking U.S. shipping, and Irish nationals, because the
Irish were engaged in a fight for independence from Britain. The Act
was, however, used to persecute many would-be citizens who criticized
the Adams administration, as was the Sedition Act,[2] which was used
to persecute the editors and publishers of opposition newspapers such
as the Philadelphia Aurora. The acts encouraged a reign of terror
against critics, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who
responded with such measures as the Kentucky[3] and Virginia[4]
Resolutions of 1798, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799,[5] and the
Virginia Report of 1799,[6] which defined the "Doctrine of '98" and
led to the defeat of John Adams and election of Thomas Jefferson in
1800, in what became called the "Revolution of 1800", and many
considered that to settle the issue that the Alien and Sedition Acts
were unconstitutional.[7]

But a Sedition Act was again adopted May 16, 1918, during WWI,[8]
making it a crime to criticize the government or Constitution of the
United States. During the Red Scare of 1919-20 U.S. Attorney-General
A. Mitchell Palmer and his special assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, used
the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act of 1917 to persecute leftist
reformers, arresting more than 1500 for disloyalty, although most of
them were eventually released. However, Emma Goldman, Alexander
Berkman, Mollie Steimer, and 245 other persons were deported to
Russia.

When President Lincoln tried civilians in military courts during the
1861-65 War of Secession, the Supreme Court held, in Ex Parte Milligan
71 U.S. 2 (1866): "Those great and good men foresaw that troublous
times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive under
restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends
deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional
liberty would be in peril, unless established by irrepealable law. The
history of the world had taught them that what was done in the past
might be attempted in the future. The Constitution of the United
States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace,
and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at
all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more
pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that
any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great
exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or
despotism...."[9]

The boundary of when persons on U.S. territory could be tried by
military courts under the Articles of War rather than as criminals was
tested in the Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus in Ex Parte
Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942),[10] which upheld military prosecution of 7
German spies or saboteurs who had entered U.S. territory covertly.

The issue of extended detention of persons of foreign descent was
decided in the Korematsu case, which affirmed the detention of a
Japanese-American who protested the detention of Japanese Americans,
although he was later found not guilty at the district court level.
This case is now generally considered an embarrassment for U.S. case
law, although it has not been overturned.

These and other precedents support full due process rights for foreign
nationals who are in the United States legally, leave a grey area for
foreign nationals here illegally or legally but through fraud.

[1] http://www.constitution.org/rf/alien_1798.htm

[2] http://www.constitution.org/rf/sedition_1798.htm

[3] http://www.constitution.org/rf/kr_1798.htm

[4] http://www.constitution.org/rf/vr_1798.htm

[5] http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1799.htm

[6] http://www.constitution.org/rf/vr_1799.htm

[7] See Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, Book 3, Ch.
27, § 1288-9, http://www.constitution.org/js/js_327.htm

[8] http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918/usspy.html

[9] http://www.constitution.org/ussc/071-002a.htm

[10] http://www.constitution.org/ussc/317-001a.htm

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