"PATRIOT" Act II
Also known as the
"Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003"
See Also: USA `Patriot' Act of 2001


Contents


you are not going to believe who I hung out with last night.
        Bob Barr from Atlanta and his wife.
        Yes, the four-termer republican.
        The Dossier Project: Jan 14-18, 2004
I guess that was ok after protesting Oliver North all morning and the night before, eh?
            http://madison.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15855/index.php
            http://madison.indymedia.org/feature/display/15846/index.php
            http://madison.indymedia.org/feature/display/15798/index.php
        I didn't realize how big of a rift there was between conservatives and neocons doing this whole hitler endrun.
        If Bob Barr is scared, I am too.
        He says all of Patriot II is going to be passed a piece at a time this year before people realize all their rights have gone away and fears it's already too late.
        Anyhew, he's researching, outing and exposing this whole PNAC group, and they're attacking him back pretty heavily.

--Marco Capelli, "ATI #377," Activist Times, Inc, 1/20/04

 



"On February 7 [2003], Charles Lewis, head of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, received a secret, but not classified, Justice Department draft of a bill that would expand the already unprecedented government powers to restrict civil liberties authorized by the USA Patriot Act. This new bill is called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. Lewis, in an act of patriotism -- since this still is a constitutional democracy -- put the 86-page draft on the center's Web site . . . Section 201 would overturn a federal court decision that ordered the Bush administration to reveal the identities of those it has detained (imprisoned) since 9-11. . . . Under the proposed Ashcroft bill reversing that court decision, for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted. . . . In Argentina, those secretly taken away were known as `the disappeared.'

[The phenomenon of disappearances is considered a crime against humanity by the Statute for the International Criminal Court: "`Enforced disappearance of persons' means the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time."]

        "Section 501 of the blandly titled Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, an American citizen can be stripped of citizenship if he or she `becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated as a ``terrorist organization,'' if that group is engaged in hostilities against the United States.' . . . What this section of the bill actually means is that if you provide `material support' to an organization by sending a check for its legal activities -- not knowing that it has been designated a `terrorist' group for other things it does -- you can be stripped of your citizenship and be detained indefinitely [or deported to any country that agreed to take you] as an alien. While South Africa was ruled by an apartheid government, certain activities of the African National Congress were categorized as `terrorist,' but many Americans provided support to the legal anti-apartheid work of that organization.
        "Under Section 302 of John Ashcroft's design for our future during the indefinite war on terrorism, there is another change in our legal system. Under current law, the FBI can collect DNA identification records of persons convicted of various crimes. But under the USA Patriot Act II, the `Attorney General or Secretary of Defense' will be able to `collect, analyze, and maintain DNA samples' of "suspected terrorists.' And as Georgetown law professor David Cole notes -- `mere association' will be enough to involve you with suspected terrorist groups. What does `association' mean? For one thing, `material support,' under which you could lose your citizenship."

--Nat Hentoff, "Ashcroft Out of Control - Ominous Sequel
to USA Patriot Act," Village Voice, 2/28/03

 


"Against a backdrop of perpetual war, it's hard to imagine that Congress will put up much of a fuss over Patriot II. Who could vote against better domestic security? Here are some of the more unsettling proposals:

"At no point in this sequence is the Bush/Ashcroft notion of legal process distinguishable from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, or any other despot one cares to name. The only difference is the frequency of usage, and that's the next step: particularly given the bellicosity of Bush foreign policy, soon to be on display in Iraq and Palestine, future major terrorist crimes on American soil are a virtual certainty. Israel, a much smaller, much more militarized, and far more experienced country, cannot prevent them; there is no reason to expect the U.S. can, either.
        "When that happens, the public and political outrage will be the impetus that allows these sweeping measures [of PATRIOT II] to be implemented more broadly. The laws will already be on the books and found meritous, more often than not, by 20 years of conservative court appointees. . . .
        "All in all, the only individuals whose behavior is earning them the title of people officially at war with the United States -- and all it has stood for -- work in the Bush Administration itself. The Congressional Republicans, and Democrats, who might well support such legislation deserve to be deluged by public outcry. Tell them it's an affront to liberty and democracy. Tell them it's unpatriotic. Tell them the Domestic Surveillance Enhancement Act of 2003 is positively Un-American."

--Geov Parrish, "The Police State Enhancement Act of 2003," workingforchange.com, 2/10/03