Threats to Civil Liberties
As the editorial page of the Washington Post put it: The opposition to the PATRIOT Act is in fact “discomfort over the administration’s broader disregard for civil liberties,” including:
- Mass secret arrests of Arabs and Muslims followed by detention for extended periods without charges, denials of access to counsel, secret hearings and, in some cases, abuse by prison guards;
- Abuse of the material witness authority to detain citizens and others without charges;
- Discriminatory enforcement of the immigration laws, leading to arbitrary detentions and deportations;
- Detentions of Americans incommunicado as “enemy combatants” without access to lawyers or the courts;
- Expanded use of secret wiretaps and secret searches of Americans’ homes and offices;
- Massive growth in surveillance technologies and authority (including the authority under the USA Patriot Act to seize library and medical records and all commercial databases) with inadequate legal protections against abuse;
- Spying on lawful political and religious activity; and
- Eavesdropping on attorney-client communications without judicial
approval or oversight.
Compiled by the Rights Working Group
The following specific laws and policies are responsible for these and other civil liberties violations:
- October 12, 2001, Memorandum for Heads of all Federal Departments and Agencies, which limits disclosure of public documents and records, and undermines the Freedom of Information Act.
- October 31, 2001, Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons Interim Regulation, which permits eavesdropping on attorney-client conversations in prison without obtaining permission from a judge.
- November 5, 2001, Executive Order 13233, which hides Presidential records from public view by allowing current and former Presidents to withhold records from his administration.
- November 13, 2001, Executive Order establishing military tribunals, at which hearsay may be used, the accused may not see evidence, and less than a unanimous vote may result in the death penalty.
- May 30, 2002, The Attorney General’s Investigative Guidelines, which permit the FBI to conduct surveillance of religious services, Internet chat-rooms, political demonstrations, and other public meetings of any kind without having any evidence that a crime has been or may be committed
- June 2, 2002, Presidential order naming José Padilla an “enemy combatant,” which established this designation for American citizens to be held without Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of an individual knowing charges, having an attorney, and being granted a speedy trial.
- November 25, 2002, Homeland Security Act Section 225, which lowers relevant standard from “reasonable belief” of a life-threatening emergency to a “good faith belief” and allows communications providers to use the emergency exception to disclose data to any government entity, not just law enforcement, and drop the requirement that the threat to life or limb be immediate (this section does not expire, rendering the sunset of Section 212 irrelevant).
- March 24, 2003, Department of Justice Rule amending 28 CFR Part 16 Privacy Act of 1974, which eliminates many safeguards designed to prevent the potential for broad dissemination of unsubstantiated, incorrect, or inappropriate information via law enforcement. Fails to ensure accuracy of National Crime Information Center (NCIC) records.
- April 17, 2003, Interim Decision #3488 from John Ashcroft, which allows the attorney general to override court decisions granting bond to immigrants seeking asylum, by requiring most immigrants to be jailed indefinitely without bond when DOJ cites “national security” risks.
- U.S. practice of torturing and/or rendering terror suspects to countries where they will certainly be tortured such as Syria, Jordan, and Uzbekistan.
- U.S. policy of detaining terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without charges or access to legal counsel, and without oversight from the Red Cross or other NGOs to assure compliance with international standards for housing prisoners of war and compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
- REAL ID Act, recently passed by Congress but not yet signed by President Bush, which requires all U.S. citizens to obtain a national driver’s license, prohibits illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses, and sets up unreasonable obstacles for people seeking asylum.