Congress Has an Obligation to Revisit the Patriot Act

News and Opinion for Democrats Against Bush -- Part II

"Against the backdrop of wide public support for repealing the Patriot Act, Congress now has an obligation to revisit the Patriot Act and at least remove some its more egregious elements.

It should also block efforts by the Justice Department to amass even greater surveillance powers. Turning the nation’s librarians, bankers, and web service providers into East German Stasi-like snoops for the FBI is as un-American it is absurd."

News-Press (Florida)

Some elements should be cut

Groundswell of critics means problems

Wayne Madsen PRO
Published by news-press.com on November 16, 2003

This article can no longer be found on the News-Press website.

Excerpt--

WASHINGTON

... Now a skeptical public and some members of Congress want to revisit the Patriot Act and roll back some of its more excessive provisions. That’s because Attorney General John Ashcroft, who recently went around the country defending the Patriot Act to friendly audiences, has used his new powers for purposes outside the arena of the war on terrorism.

For example, Patriot Act provisions have been used against prostitution rings, cigarette smugglers, environmental vandals and journalists who wrote about a lone computer hacker.

Recently, an FBI bugging device was found in the office of the Democratic mayor of Philadelphia during a close re-election race with a Republican opponent. If given his way, Ashcroft intends to craft even greater surveillance legislation in the form of the so-called Patriot II and Victory Acts. ...

Against the backdrop of wide public support for repealing the Patriot Act, Congress now has an obligation to revisit the Patriot Act and at least remove some its more egregious elements.

— Wayne Madsen is a senior fellow of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.epic.org) in Washington, D.C. Readers may write him at EPIC, 1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 200, Washington, D.C. 20009.

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.