R
----- Original Message -----
From: andie nachgeborenen
Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: [lbo-talk] New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals
An example of the real problem and trhe real threat of
the police state:
--- Top Stories - AP
New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA - In the two years since law enforcement
agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down
and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have
increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on
al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common
crimes.
AP Photo
The Justice Department (news - web sites) said it has
used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to
crack down on currency smugglers and seize money
hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and
drug dealers.
Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a
charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass
destruction" against a California man after a pipe
bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in
his car.
A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man
accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking
a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical
weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get
12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually
brings about six months.
Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law,
which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as
"any substance that is designed or has the capability
to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic
chemicals.
Civil liberties and legal defense groups are bothered
by the string of cases, and say the government soon
will be routinely using harsh anti-terrorism laws
against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the
Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to
stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them
beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for
the National Association of Criminal Defense
Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to
fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are
teaching their people how to use it on ordinary
citizens."
Prosecutors aren't apologizing.
Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites)
completed a 16-city tour this week defending the
Patriot Act as key to preventing a second catastrophic
terrorist attack. Federal prosecutors have brought
more than 250 criminal charges under the law, with
more than 130 convictions or guilty pleas.
The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks,
erased many restrictions that had barred the
government from spying on its citizens, granting
agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic
and computer eavesdropping and access private
financial data.
Stefan Cassella, deputy chief for legal policy for the
Justice Department's asset forfeiture and money
laundering section, said that while the Patriot Act's
primary focus was on terrorism, lawmakers were aware
it contained provisions that had been on prosecutors'
wish lists for years and would be used in a wide
variety of cases.
In one case prosecuted this year, investigators used a
provision of the Patriot Act to recover $4.5 million
from a group of telemarketers accused of tricking
elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the
Canadian lottery. Prosecutors said the defendants told
victims they would receive their prize as soon as they
paid thousands of dollars in income tax on their
winnings.
Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would
have had to use international treaties and appeal for
help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash,
deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they
simply seized it from assets held by those banks in
the United States.
"These are appropriate uses of the statute," Cassella
said. "If we can use the statute to get money back for
victims, we are going to do it."
The complaint that anti-terrorism legislation is being
used to go after people who aren't terrorists is just
the latest in a string of criticisms.
More than 150 local governments have passed
resolutions opposing the law as an overly broad threat
to constitutional rights.
Critics also say the government has gone too far in
charging three U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, a
power presidents wield during wartime that is not part
of the Patriot Act. The government can detain such
individuals indefinitely without allowing them access
to a lawyer.
And Muslim and civil liberties groups have criticized
the government's decision to force thousands of mostly
Middle Eastern men to risk deportation by registering
with immigration authorities.
"The record is clear," said Ralph Neas, president of
the liberal People for the American Way Foundation.
"Ashcroft and the Justice Department have gone too
far."
Some of the restrictions on government surveillance
that were erased by the Patriot Act had been enacted
after past abuses - including efforts by the FBI (news
- web sites) to spy on civil rights leaders and
anti-war demonstrators during the Cold War. Tim Lynch,
director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the
Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said it
isn't far fetched to believe that the government might
overstep its bounds again.
"I don't think that those are frivolous fears," Lynch
said. "We've already heard stories of local police
chiefs creating files on people who have protested the
(Iraq (news - web sites)) war ... The government is
constantly trying to expand its jurisdictions, and it
needs to be watched very, very closely."
___
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030914/1f1cb47c/attachment.htm>