Man, 19, charged in torching of library

Re: PATRIOT
Sounds like you have some information worth sharing? Do tell.

Here’s mine. How many American’s library records have been reviewed under the Patriot Act. NADA.

Required Reading (for Truth Seekers)
“What if”? Without these two words, Patriot Act detractors have nothing to say.

The following piece doesn’t ask “What if”? It just provides facts. Novel idea.

Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

September 26, 2003

Patriot Act Privacy rights are not at stake

Kasey Warner

AS a federal prosecutor, one of the most aggravating and disturbing displays of ACLU misinformation – believed by those who accept what they hear without close examination – is the claim that “library habits [of our citizens] could become the target of government surveillance … where the thought police can target us for what we chose to read or what Web sites we visit,” as the ACLU claimed on July 22. Let’s look at the facts.

We know terrorists and spies often use libraries to plan and carry out illegal activities. Law enforcement has long been able to obtain business records – including library business records – when those records are shown to be relevant to criminal inquiries. For example, in the 1997 Versace murder case, a Florida grand jury properly obtained records relevant to the murder from public libraries in Miami Beach. In the 1990 Zodiac gunman investigation, a New York grand jury received records from a Manhattan public library after investigators believed the gunman was influenced by a certain poet. These grand jury subpoenas do not even require a court order.

Contrary to the ACLU-inspired assumption, the Patriot Act does not allow law enforcement to unilaterally compel production of library records. In fact, the act adds the additional safeguard of requiring a court order before records are produced. Further, it allows such production of records only when judges are satisfied that law enforcement is attempting “to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person” or “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

As an even further safeguard, the act specifically prohibits investigations of “a U.S. person solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.” Finally, close Congressional oversight is provided, with the attorney general required to “fully inform” Congress every six months of how these provisions have been implemented.

I should also note the House Judiciary Committee has stated it is satisfied with the department’s use of the new provisions, having “not given rise to any concern that the authority is being misused or abused.”

A recent article in The Washington Times may be instructive in dispelling the concern that police are randomly spying on good citizens in libraries to see what they are reading:

“One of the most unfairly maligned provisions of the Patriot Act is section 215, which permits the FBI to apply for a court order requiring production of library and business records in the course of a terrorism investigation … As Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald notes in the current tissue of City Journal, time and secrecy are uniquely important in anti-terrorism investigations. ‘The department wants to know if an al-Qaida suspect has consulted maps of the Croton reservoir and researched the toxic capacities of cyanide in the New York Public Library, not in order to win a conviction for poisoning New York’s water supply but to pre-empt the plot before it happens,’ she writes. ‘The battleground is not the courtroom but the world beyond, where speed and secrecy can mean life or death.”

Certainly, we must always maintain a healthy concern for the protection of our privacy and basic constitutional rights. However, government’s first responsibility is the security of our people, and we cannot afford to lose the tools provided by the USA Patriot Act to prevent future terrorist attacks in this great country of ours, especially when no privacy or constitutional rights are even at stake.

Warner is U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia.

Re: PATRIOT
>>And as for having information worth sharing, kindly identify the source you have for your proclamation that the FBI has never invoked section 215. They certainly are not going to admit it and I hardly think they are going to let you rummage around in their files, and if they had, then your statement would constitute a violation of federal laws.

Classic.

Ask a question. Then follow with a rejection, before the answer. Ad Ostrichem?

This was hardly a quiet story. Many sources to use, so I offer the venerable Washington Post.

The Washington Post

September 18, 2003
“Ashcroft: Patriot Act Provision Unused”

The Justice Department, which has repeatedly been accused of encroaching on civil liberties in its war on terrorism, has never actually used a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows it to seek records from libraries, bookstores or other businesses, according to a confidential memo from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

Ashcroft said in the memo to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that he had decided to declassify that previously secret information because of his “concern that the public not be misled about the manner in which the U.S. Department of Justice, and the FBI in particular, have been utilizing the authorities provided in the USA Patriot Act.

“The number of times [the provision has been used to date is zero,” Ashcroft said in the memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post….