We were assured that the USA Patriot Act would be wielded only to nab terrorists. After all, in the law's full, convoluted name — Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act — the only crime mentioned is terrorism. According to US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), Congress, shaken by 9/11, didn't even read the gargantuan bill before passing it. They apparently bought the line that it was necessary to prevent more attacks and voted for it sight unseen.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, in defending the act — which he frequently has to do — only mentions its role in terrorism. In his speeches about it, he says the following (or something almost exactly like it):
“The Patriot Act does three things: First, it closes the gaping holes in our ability to investigate terrorists. Second, the Patriot Act updates our anti-terrorism laws to meet the challenges of new technology, and new threats. Third, the Patriot Act has allowed us to build an extensive team that shares information and fights terrorism together.”
In another speech, he invoked 9/11: “Armed with the tools provided by the Patriot Act, the men and women of justice and law enforcement have dedicated themselves to the unfinished work of those who resisted, those who assisted, and those who sacrificed on September 11th.”
He told Congress: “Our ability to prevent another catastrophic attack on American soil would be more difficult, if not impossible, without the Patriot Act. It has been the key weapon used across America in successful counter-terrorist operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists.”
When he signed the legislation into law, President Bush said: “These terrorists must be pursued, they must be defeated, and they must be brought to justice. And that is the purpose of this legislation.”
Get it? It's all about terrorism. In all of their speeches and public comments, Ashcroft and Bush never even faintly whispered about any other use of the Patriot Act. But those other uses have been legion.
Around two years after 9/11, unnamed Justice Department officials admitted that the act has been applied in “hundreds” of cases that had nothing to do with terrorism.
The Patriot Act was used to investigate allegations that an owner of two Las Vegas titty clubs was bribing local officials. The feds invoked section 314 of the act to get financial records of the parties under suspicion. That particular part of the act applies to people suspected “of engaging in terrorist acts or money laundering activities.” Notice the weasel-word “or.” They can be engaged in terrorism or they can be laundering money for any purpose under the Sun.
Section 319 of the law was used to get money from a lawyer indicted on charges of bilking his clients. He skipped the country and allegedly put a wad of cash in Belizean banks. When Belize refused to turn over the dough, the feds invoked the Patriot Act to seize $1.7 million from the banks' accounts in the US.
The owner of a fan website devoted to the sci-fi show Stargate SG-1 posted streaming video of episodes for download. MGM and the Motion Picture Association of America called in the FBI for this alleged copyright violation, and they whipped out the Patriot Act to get the webmaster's financial records from his ISP.
From January through October 2003, a computer science grad student in Madison, Wisconsin, disrupted emergency radio frequencies over a several block radius. One of his feats was to broadcast X-rated recordings over police radios. The student was considered intellectually gifted but socially retarded, and even the US Assistant Attorney who prosecuted the case said that the “immaturity of the defendant” was the motivator, not terrorism. Nonetheless, prosecuted under section 814 of the Patriot Act, which covers “cyberterrorism,” the radio hacker got eight years in the slammer.
A Mexican citizen who pled guilty to attempting to smuggle over $824,000 from Alabama to his home country was nailed under a Patriot Act provision covering the reporting of currency.
The expanded surveillance capabilities of the act were also used to break up two rings of child pornographers/molesters, to track down a man who had abducted and sexually assaulted his estranged wife, and to break up an ecstasy-smuggling operation.
Additionally, the Justice Department has exploited the Patriot Act to:
Further, the New York Times reported: “Authorities also have used their expanded authority to track private Internet communications in order to investigate a major drug distributor, a four-time killer, an identity thief and a fugitive who fled on the eve of trial by using a fake passport.”
Just give us these powers, the authorities said, and we'll only use them to nail evil-doing terrorists, to avenge those killed on 9/11, to keep Ma and Pa Kettle safe from the brown hordes of al Qaeda. But now these expanded powers are being against hackers, bribers, copyright violators, con artists, kidnappers, killers, child pornographers, cash smugglers, ecstasy makers, and radio jammers. And that's just what's we know about.
Not that the end result of busting some of these characters is a bad thing in and of itself. But if these new powers of law enforcement are so wonderful and necessary and legitimate, why were they sold to us solely as anti-terrorism measures? Why has the Administration refused to acknowledge that the Patriot Act is being used against myriad crimes, from low-level stuff to serious violations?
Rest assured, this power grab was meant from the beginning to apply across the board. After all, most provisions of the Patriot Act had been written well before 9/11, but they couldn't get passed due to Congress-critters who were concerned about that quaint relic called the US Constitution. These blocked measures just needed the perfect excuse to become law. Along came 9/11...