"PATRIOT" Act challenged -- more from the PI

[unixronin]

The Seattle PI reports that while George Bush wants to renew the PATRIOT Act (and even make it permanent), a wide-ranging coalition including Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, the ACLU, Americans For Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has urged significant changes.  Sections of the PATRIOT Act challenged by the group, "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances", include:

• Section 213, aka the "sneak and peek" provision, allowing federal agents to secretly search people's homes and businesses without any deadline on giving notice that the intrusion had taken place, in blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment;
• Section 215, which allows federal agents to collect personal data (including medical history, library books checked out, and goods purchased) on American citizens without evidence of any connection to terrorism;
• Section 802, which defines "terrorism" so broadly that "Ordinary people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights on issues across the political spectrum might get charged as terrorists" under the law's definition.

Newly appointed US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is quoted as saying that the PATRIOT act has been "mischaracterized" by "a small but vocal minority", and claims that not a single civil rights abuse has occurred under the PATRIOT Act.  (For the right definitions of "civil", "rights", "abuse", "not", and "occurred", I'm sure.)  And if you believe that, I have this bridge in Brooklyn that I can make you a GREAT deal on....

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

My thinking exactly. I mean, we're talking the AG who publicly stated he didn't have any problems with Abu Ghraib. Compare and contrast with Clinton's AG who had to burn Branch Davidian children to death in order to save them....

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

Whoa, there!

I won't even begin to argue that the Branch Davidian debacle was a Charlie Foxtrot from the word GO... and I sincerely believe that the best response to it that the government could have made was to disband the BATF.

But as I recall, the burning was instigated by the Davidians themselves. I am going from memory here, and don't have a citation handy, but I think I remember that the fires were started inside the compound.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Technically true, but it's one of those cases of "lying by telling part of the truth". There's testimony and evidence that the probable ignition source was open flames within the buildings, yes -- cooking stoves, candle lanterns and the like, power to the buildings having been cut off -- but all indication is that the medium that fuelled the fire was the vast quantities of tear-gas pumped into the buildings, and that absent that gas, there would have been no fire. CS and CN tear gases are known to be flammable, and even potentially explosive, in high concentrations, and with the power shut off, it had to be pretty much a sucker bet that any cooking still being done was being done on open flames.

One should also consider the testimony from the few Davidian survivors that armored personnel carriers were used to demolish and block the building entryways before the fire started, mostly preventing escape (though most people within the buildings were disoriented or incapacitated by the tear gas, and unable to escape anyway), and that while this was happening, BATF agents were firing blindly into the buildings with machineguns. BATF has repeatedly denied, but debris that would have confirmed or refuted the charge was intentionally destroyed by BATF, and media sources were not permitted to examine it first. Allegations from the survivors are that this debris included bullet-riddled doors and other incriminating items.

I seem to recall some statement from some ATF functionary stating that bullet-holes in the doors were the result of Davidians shooting out of the building. However, not only do the Davidian survivors claim no-one inside was shooting, but if you're shooting from inside a building at people a hundred yards or more away outside it, only a fool shoots out through a closed door. Reportedly, the armored assault was launched after an AFT agent attempting to enter the building via a second-floor window was shot from inside the building; however, there is videotape of this incident, which I have seen, and it looked an awful lot like a friendly-fire incident to me.

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

What I never understood about that whole debacle was that a NG commanding officer would permit military ordinance and equipment to be turned over to the command of a civilian, untrained in its capabilities and uses -- no matter how high-ranking a civilian he might be. There is a definite line of demarkation between, say, a tear-gas cannister launcher and an MBT. Police agencies are trained in the use of one, and understand its implications. The same cannot be said of the other.

We agree that ATF screwed up, by the numbers. What I was taking exception to was your characterization of the Attorney General supporting the screwup, or even ordering it. I don't recall any evidence of that from the time -- can you refresh my memory?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It'll clearly never be demonstrated that she ordered it, or she'd have been thrown to the wolves at the time. My recollection, for which I can produce no references, is that approval for use of military force and the whole high-impact conduct of the operation came down from her, despite the local sheriff repeatedly saying "Look, all this is totally unnecessary, I know Koresh, he's a good man, if you'd just have let me go and talk to him he'd have walked out peacefully with me." But Reno and the ATF wanted to Make An Example.

(It's not like he'd even committed any active crime ... the justification for the whole thing was just a dispute over whether he owned any firearms he needed to pay a $200 Class III tax on, and iirc, BATF didn't even have hard evidence that he even had any Class III firearms -- they merely asserted that they believed him to have been assembling them.)