Dear A-Letter Reader:
My late father, J. Carl Bauman, was a Kodak movie buff who, from my long ago birth, chronicled my childhood on 16mm film. There is one memorable sequence, (I was about 3-years-old), when Dad had the bright idea to film little Bobby holding a garden hose in our back yard.
The film begins with me assuring Dad I won't squirt him with the hose, if only he will turn on the water, shaking my head forcefully: "No, no!" Of course, as soon as the water gushes, I turn the hose on cameraman Dad and the screen becomes liquid. The closing sequence shows me wailing loudly, my nude, smacked bum prominent center screen, as I am hauled off into the house, soaking wet -- as was Dad.
I cite this personal vignette because there is a parallel in the 2001 adoption by the U.S. Congress of the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act and its subsequent enforcement. In the wake of the 9-11 tragedy the Act's sponsors and the Bush administration insisted and repeated that this unprecedented suspension of civil liberties was absolutely necessary to protect Americans against terrorists and terrorism. The explicit promise was made that this law that waived numerous guaranteed constitutional rights and safeguards, would not be used to prosecute other crimes.
No sooner than the PATRIOT Act became law, with convenient provisions that allowed the government to act in secret while accounting to no one, then they began to use the law in all sorts of alleged criminal activities that had no relation to terrorism without any judicial oversight. Last week, Congress forced the FBI to admit that it issued thousands of subpoenas to banks, phone companies and Internet providers last year, aggressively using powers under the PATRIOT Act to monitor the activities of thousands of U.S. citizens.
The report was the first to detail the government's use of a controversial form of administrative subpoena that can be issued without court oversight -- an FBI agent files a paper in his own files that replaces a probable cause subpoena that used to require a judge or magistrate's approval for a search and seizure of evidence.
According to the new report, the FBI issued 9,254 national security letters in 2005, covering 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal foreign residents. The Justice Dept. report also outlined an increase in secret warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The secret court approved a record 2,072 orders for secret searches or surveillance in 2005 -- an 18% increase from the year before. And that number does not count illegal searches authorized by the President without any warrants.
The PATRIOT Act was supposed to be an "anti-terrorist" law. We have repeatedly pointed out how the Act is used for easy secret police action against any alleged "crime" the Feds choose. Two federal judges ruled in secret that the Act can be used in any criminal investigation, not just those involving alleged terrorism.
In Arizona, the Act was used to convict, possibly wrongfully, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese extraction, of buying stolen baby food! Eight years in prison based on evidence obtained with secret anti-terrorist investigations that the defense counsel was not allowed to see. The Act has been used against Las Vegas night club owners who allegedly engaged in bribery and wire fraud and against alleged money launderers in many cases.
Know your rights -- the ones that remain -- and protect them.
That's the way that it looks from here,
BOB BAUMAN, Editor
P.S. For more about the PATRIOT Act see, click below.
LINK: Click here for more information .