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Patriot Act up for Renewal, but Law's Effectiveness Unclear


By Andrew Zajac
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
Cartoon: Patriot Act Expansion

Cartoon: Patriot Act Expansion



WASHINGTON--The public face of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' campaign to renew the Patriot Act does not belong to an al-Qaida-trained killer captured using the law.

Instead, it belongs to Jared Bjarnason, an unemployed 30-year-old serving 18 months in a low-security West Texas prison for sending an e-mail threatening "death and destruction" to an El Paso mosque.

Gonzales said last month that Bjarnason's arrest was an example of how "the Patriot Act was used to protect the lives and liberties of members of the El Paso Islamic Center," because it let investigators track down Bjarnason before he could carry out his threat.

But closer scrutiny suggests investigators did not see Bjarnason as much of a threat, the mosque almost didn't report his e-mail, and the government could have obtained the e-mail records almost as fast without the Patriot Act.

"It's absurd," said Bill Maynard, a supervisor in the public defender's office that represented Bjarnason. "The prosecution in no way demonstrates the effectiveness of the Patriot Act."

A portion of the Patriot Act--the significant increase in police powers enacted in the jittery days after the Sept. 11 attacks--is due to expire at the end of the year, and congressional hearings begin Tuesday with Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller slated to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The renewal opens up a debate over the law's effectiveness as the White House mounts an energetic campaign to persuade Congress to re-enact it.

But Congress is aggressively reviewing the law's performance.

Critics question whether the cases the Bush administration is citing to prove the act's effectiveness show anything of the sort. In some cases, they say, police could have achieved much the same results without the law. In others, they add, the defendants are run-of-the-mill criminals, not the terrorists who were supposedly the act's chief targets.

"These were extraordinary powers, meant for extraordinary acts," said Lisa Graves, senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. "They didn't say we needed these vast additional powers to deal with all sorts of ordinary crime. They said we need them to deal with terrorism."

Justice Department spokesman Kevin Madden said the Bjarnason case shows "the Patriot Act as a common-sense law enforcement tool...outside the terrorist arena."

The 342-page law was cobbled together in 45 days, in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The act gave law enforcement and intelligence officials more leeway to share information, monitor Internet traffic, tap phones and obtain personal and business records.

But critics say the fevered atmosphere surrounding the law's passage left too few checks on police and prosecutors.

Skeptics aren't limited to civil libertarians. On March 22, a half-dozen conservative groups, from the American Conservative Union to Gun Owners of America, joined the ACLU in forming Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances to lobby Congress to modify the Patriot Act. "We agree that much of the Patriot Act is necessary...to defeat terrorism," the coalition's members wrote President Bush. "But we remain very concerned that some of its provisions...infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans."

Mirroring unease at both ends of the political spectrum, new legislation to correct the perceived excesses of the Patriot Act was crafted by Sens. Larry Craig, a conservative Republican from Idaho, and a Dick Durbin, liberal Democrat of Illinois. The bill is to be introduced Tuesday.

Meanwhile, five states and more than 375 local governments have passed anti-Patriot Act resolutions, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a nonprofit civil liberties group.

While just 16 sections of the Patriot Act--out of more than 100--are to expire, their looming sunset could open the door for several changes in the law.

Critics cite three parts of the law as especially objectionable. One, dubbed "sneak-and-peek," gives law enforcement far more power to search property without notifying the subject until after the search.

The Justice Department said prosecutors have asked for 155 such delayed notification search warrants since 2001.

Another section, sometimes called the "library records" provision, allows investigators to seize business and personal records--including medical data and lists of library withdrawals--without showing probable cause or even linking the subject to terrorism.

And a third section redefines domestic terrorism in a way that conservatives worry will include anti-abortion protesters.

Gonzales has told audiences that he welcomes debate on the Patriot Act, but he also has made it clear he thinks fears of Big Brother-type encroachments are overblown.

Beyond specific legal issues, the administration cites one argument it hopes will trump all others: It insists that the Patriot Act works. "It's one of the reasons we haven't had a terrorist attack in three years," Gonzales told CNN's Wolf Blitzer recently.

But Gonzales offers few specifics, focusing instead on the act's capacity to solve crimes by letting police quickly collect private e-mail information--a less controversial facet of the law.

It's a strategy aimed at avoiding a discussion of the touchier aspects of the Patriot Act, said Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia who heads Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances. "It's intended to shift the focus to cases ordinary citizens can understand and tug at their heartstrings," Barr said.

But even in the cases cited by Gonzales, it's not clear how much help the Patriot Act provided. In addition to the Bjarnason case, the other case Gonzales has been emphasizing is the safe recovery of a baby cut from her murdered mother in December in Missouri.

The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, was found unharmed, according to Gonzales, because of a Patriot Act provision that allowed government officials to contact an Internet service provider and collect information on e-mail traffic between the victim and the accused murderer without getting a judge's approval. In this case, FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza estimated it would have taken "at least an hour or more" to get a search warrant from a judge. "We had the ability to get the records immediately and we did," he said.

The Patriot Act's opponents dismiss this.

"They may be able to move marginally faster, but I don't think that warrants tossing aside the Fourth Amendment," which prohibits improper searches and seizures, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that addresses civil rights issues raised by new technologies.

In the Bjarnason case, court records show that on April 20, 2004, Bjarnason e-mailed the El Paso Islamic Center that it "will become the center of death and destruction" within three days unless the mosque arranged for the release of all hostages held in Iraq. Gonzales said that under pre-Patriot Act rules, authorities would need "a string of search warrants" that "could have taken 30 days, far beyond his threatened deadline."

Instead of getting warrants, investigators made two emergency requests--one to Microsoft Corp., for information about Bjarnason's e-mail account and another to an Internet service provider, Time Warner Inc., to locate the computer from which the threats were sent.

Maynard, of the public defender's office in El Paso, said authorities could have quickly achieved the same results using traditional search warrants.

Two days after sending the e-mail, Bjarnason confessed before investigators had a chance to ask any questions, according to court records. Bjarnason was not arrested until April 22--suggesting he wasn't seen as an immediate threat--and four days later he was released on $5,000 bond. Eventually he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Omar Hernandez, president of the 300-member mosque, said he wrestled with whether even to notify authorities after receiving the threatening e-mail from "freedomlover_2." "If it was just a joke, I would hate to affect their life over a dumb mistake," Hernandez said.

Ironically, the mosque was attacked six months later with two makeshift firebombs, which failed to detonate and caused no injuries or damage. On March 22, a man arrested in the incident pleaded guilty to attempting to damage religious property and other charges.

There is no evidence the Patriot Act was used to capture the culprit.





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Summary:

"The public face of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' campaign to renew the Patriot Act does not belong to an al-Qaida-trained killer captured using the law. Instead, it belongs to Jared Bjarnason, an unemployed 30-year-old serving 18 months in a low-security West Texas prison for sending an e-mail threatening 'death and destruction' to an El Paso mosque. Gonzales said last month [March 2005] that Bjarnsason's arrest was an example of how 'the Patriot Act was used to protect the lives and liberties of members of the El Paso Islamic Center,' because it let investigators track down Bjarnason before he could carry out his threat. But closer scrutiny suggests investigators did not see Bjarnason as much of a threat, the mosque almost didn't report his e-mail, and the government could have obtained the e-mail records almost as fast without the Patriot Act." (Chicago Tribune) This article debates the effectiveness of the Patriot Act "as the White House mounts an energetic campaign to persuade Congress to re-enact it."
Citation:

You can copy and paste this information into your own documents.

Zajac, Andrew. "Patriot Act up for Renewal, but Law's Effectiveness Unclear." Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL). 04 Apr 2005: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 19 Jul 2011.

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