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Only 3 of 763 Patriot Act wiretaps in 2008 were about terrorism. 65% were Drug cases
caradrayan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My apologies if this has been posted, I checked the front page titles.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/24/785634/-Only-3-of-763-Patriot-Act-wiretaps-in-2008-were-terrorism-related.-65-were-Drug-cases.
tl;dr
Senator Russ Feingold is shocked at how badly the justice department has misused the powers granted to them by the patriot act.
Apparently, this particular provision has been used to search peoples homes without their knowledge, not to make us safer from the terrorists, but to crack down on drug crime. Color me surprised.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/24/785634/-Only-3-of-763-Patriot-Act-wiretaps-in-2008-were-terrorism-related.-65-were-Drug-cases.
You must be frigging kidding me.
A partial transcript, commentary and more below the fold.
* MinistryOfTruth's diary :: ::
*Sen. Feingold: "I'm going to say it's quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes,"
Actually, my title isn't quite correct. The 763 warrantless wiretaps were a special sort called "Sneak and Peek", so, really, without more proof it could actually be 3 out of 1,000,000,000. Who knows. You can read the Administrative Office of the US Courts file here.
So, in keeping with the 1% Doctrine, which is also known as "What?" by Sarah Palin, the smallest risk of bad things happening is a fine excuse to throw our civil liberties down the drain.
I guess they hate us know for when we used yo have freedom.
Hell, the simple fact that the Freshman Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) felt it was necessary to read the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution to a DoJ officer whose job is to protect that Constitution and enforce it's laws speaks VOLUMES about what a blackhole for common sense the Justice Department has become.
Well, the same guy Franken read the 4th Amendment to is Assistant Attorney General David Kris, and when Senator Feingold got the cahnce to take a whack at him he didn't hold back.
And what stuns me is that, what with all the screaming teabagging wingnuts hollering "I WANT MY RIGHTS BACK!!!!", none of them, NONE of them seem to notice or care that they lost those rights when good Conservative Wingnuts were in charge of the Government. How could they even know what those rights ARE? I'd bet most, if not all of those nitwits couldn't pass the citizenship test anyway.
Thank the Gods for Senator Russ Feingold (Big D-WI) for being such a stalwart on civil rights matters.
Because the best business in America behind starting wars and killing people for insurance money is putting people in jails.
Who said Marijuana Reform couldn't help the economy?
And Marijuana reform is just the tip of the iceberg of Rx.
Let's be honest, if Bush/Cheney was selling drugs instead of torturing people, lying about WMD's, giving big no bid contracts to Haliburton and more, they'd be in jail.
Instead, all I got was this stupid FBI guy tapping into my phone line.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday.One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.
He didn't even try. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence. It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris said.
HuffingtonPost.com
Bold text added by the diarist
Not for Intelligence purposes you say?
Well, if we're parsing the difference between so called "Sneak and Peek" warrantless wiretapping and the thousands and thousands of undocumented instances of warrantless wiretapping, than we go from a 3/873 ration of terrorist realted wiretappings to non terrorist related wiretapping, which works out to about less than 1%, to a really, really low percentage which, I think it is safe to say, is not Pi.
But we still have to deal with the fact that 65% of those instances of warrantless wiretapping allowed by the US PATRIOT Act that dealt with Drug related cases, and not terrorism, as specified under the Act itself.
I thought that was the whole point? Wasn't it?
Well, than what is this all about?US PATRIOT Act
Sec. 204. Clarification of intelligence exceptions from limitations on interception and disclosure of wire, oral, and electronic communications.
and that from the US PATRIOT Act, which bares in it'sTo deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS.(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required
to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act
of 2001’’.
findlaw.com
You know, I've never really read the PATRIOT Act before, but last night I tried. Now, granted, it's 402 pages long in the link I've put up for it, so I didn't get through the whole thing, and since it's been renewed and presumably tweaked from the original Ex-President and war criminal George W. Bush signed I probably won't ever become an expert on it, but a few things did catch my eye.
For one thing, the TITLE.‘‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act
of 2001’’.
TERRORISM being the key phrase. Terrorism being used in the documents title.
Number of times Terror or Terrorism used in the titles of the 156 Sections of the US PATRIOT Act - 36
Number of times the word Drugs used in the titles of the 156 Sections of the US PATRIOT Act - ZERO
Now, I have this strange feeling for some reason that the US PATRIOT Act was sold to me as something we'd ONLY be using on TERRORISTS or suspected Terrorists.
I wonder how I got that idea?
Nevertheless, we all have the fine and principled Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold to thank for standing up for our civil liberties.Sen. Feingold: "As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers, That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary, quote, 'to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists.'"
And, just in case anybody needed any reminding.
The Fourth Amendment of the US ConstitutionThe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Signed by: 1.Washington, George, VA
2.Franklin, Benjamin, PA
3.Madison, James, VA
4.Hamilton, Alexander, NY
5.Morris, Gouverneur, PA
6.Morris, Robert, PA
7.Wilson, James, PA
8.Pinckney, Chas. Cotesworth, SC
9.Pinckney, Chas, SC
10.Rutledge, John, SC
11.Butler, Pierce, SC
12.Sherman, Roger, CT
13.Johnson, William Samuel, CT
14.McHenry, James, MD
15.Read, George, DE
16.Bassett, Richard, DE
17.Spaight, Richard Dobbs, NC
18.Blount, William, NC
19.Williamson, Hugh, NC
20.Jenifer, Daniel of St. Thomas, MD
21.King, Rufus, MA
22.Gorham, Nathaniel, MA
23.Dayton, Jonathan, NJ
24.Carroll, Daniel, MD
25.Few, William, GA
26.Baldwin, Abraham, GA
27.Langdon, John, NH
28.Gilman, Nicholas, NH
29.Livingston, William, NJ
30.Paterson, William, NJ
31.Mifflin, Thomas, PA
32.Clymer, George, PA
33.FitzSimons, Thomas, PA
34.Ingersoll, Jared, PA
35.Bedford, Gunning, Jr., DE
36.Brearley, David, NJ
37.Dickinson, John, DE
38.Blair, John, VA
39.Broom, Jacob, DE
40.Jackson, William, Secretary
Founding fathers. Put that into your crack pipe and smoke it, Glenn Beck and the rest of the troglodite wingnuts!
tl;dr
Senator Russ Feingold is shocked at how badly the justice department has misused the powers granted to them by the patriot act.
Apparently, this particular provision has been used to search peoples homes without their knowledge, not to make us safer from the terrorists, but to crack down on drug crime. Color me surprised.
caradrayan on
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Snark aside, these are the days I fucking hate the republican party. Thanks for the unitary executive theory of governance and encouraging the retarded and loud among us to still be shitting their pants about commies to the exclusion of all else. That's worked out real well for us.
I don't know which is worse.
That this happened, or that I'm not even remotely surprised that it happened.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
oh wait they didn't? so crazy
They'd just know!
And see isn't that less intrusive for everyone in the end?
I'm beginning to worry about this myself.
I thought they'd already used their twist ending when they started wire tapping opposition political groups and journalists, but they clearly saved the big finale for when our attention had started to drift. That's quality work right there.
"Remember, with one word I could make your wife a widow and nobody would suspect it was anything but the coronary you so richly deserve."
This is a ridiculous statement. The Patriot Act wasn't some all together new set of laws; it (supposedly) streamlined the existing laws we've already had and made it easier for law enforcement to do their job. Was law enforcement supposed to get this shiny new hammer and then be told "nope, sorry - you can only use it on square nails - circle headed nails off-limits". The guys complaint is with the Title not being representative of the executed uses. Really? Wow.
Say it ain't so.
1) Debatable
2) Not if it blatantly violates 4th Amendment rights.
Not when done in a fashion that violates the constitution.
Right, but what exactly happened to the people who fall in the 35%?
98.8% of those weren't terrorism cases so shouldn't have fallen under PATRIOT in the first place.
And those last 3 are STILL violating the law unless they get FISA warrants.
The government can most definitely crack down on drug cases - just get a warrant first.
How typical for a pinko communosocialfacist to go around making extremist and outrageous claims like that, undermining the very people that keep us safe. What about the ticking bomb scenario, a bomb aimed right at our children! People like you who hate America would love nothing more than to coddle Cheech and Chong while they destroy America.
I think what he meant was that these things are necessary to prevent untold abuses of power.
You know, with the exception of using them all as one word, that's uncanny.
EDIT: So uncanny, you appear to have fooled Mazer.
Poe's Law!
Is this bomb aimed at our children made entirely out of heroin? Are Cheech and Chong maniacally running through the streets blowing marijuana smoke in pedestrians' faces? I don't see the need for hyper mega warrantless ACTION!! -- that meth lab isn't going to go anywhere in the next hour,
ah damn, poe's law.
I think you may have missed the sarcasm tags.
And who knows, may the drug dealers were building a heroin bomb, which ACORN would have distributed using it's network of Census takers. The bombs would have detonated, addicting us all to heroin and putting the communist fascists in charge forever!
You forgot czarist.
I simply assumed it was understood that all Czars were fascist communists.
Hey America? Remember that time when you traded essential freedoms for a bit of a security?
Yeah... bad idea.
When it was first being discussed, I attended a debate on it at a local university (an example of something anyone who cared could have done) and it was explained as just pulling together a whole bunch of individual powers that law enforcement had been asking for for years in order to match pace with technology and emerging criminal methods, many of which incidentally were used by terrorists.
And it was sold to the public as... oh right needed things to stop terrorism and if you opposed it you were with the enemy.
...Right?
This is one of those examples of partisan politics that drives me up a fucking wall.
A lot of those wiretapping provisions were in the 1995 Counterterrorism Omnibus Act, but were excised by Republicans before the bill was passed in 1996 (mostly as a response to the OKC bombing).
Don't get me wrong. I don't shed any tears over those provisions.
But many of the very same provisions appeared, in a stronger form, in the PATRIOT Act.
When they showed up in the 1995 bill, which the Clinton Administration wrote and supported, Republicans pissed all over themselves to cry foul over the violations of civil liberties. Some accused Clinton of using the OKC tragedy for political capital. Goddamn Democrats, chipping away at the Constitution.
When they showed up in the 2001 bill, Republican pundits weeped and wailed about how 9-11 happened because Clinton was asleep at the wheel on domestic security and tried to paint anybody who opposed the PATRIOT Act as a traitor or coward. Goddamn Democrats, undermining our national security.
I'm probably going to be bitching about this very issue for the next 50 years. I'll be an old man sitting bald in a retirement home in a diaper full of my own piss ranting and raving about how Republicans acted in the late 90s while orderlies give each other uncomfortable glances.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
No.
I mean, I said it was things law enforcement had been asking for, not necessarily things that Republicans had asked for and Democrast shot down.
Fixed.
This is where we should all give more money to the ACLU and EFF.
Though in that case i believe the FBI filed it as a terrorism case.
I don't think anyone would downplay catching a terrorist as a drug case, they'd be all WOOP! WOOP! We caught a terrorist! Look at how great a job were doing! We need more funding so we can catch more terrorists!
If drug dealers are finding out about wiretap warrants the solution is to find the leak and string him up, not to start doing warrantless wiretaps. It's an abuse of power and it's either completely unnecessary or indicative of larger problems.