patact

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

National The Patriot Act by Gerry Krownstein June 14, 2005 After 9/11, Congress hurriedly and without much discussion passed a far-reaching piece of legislation called the Patriot Act. The hurriedness is evidenced by the fact that the act was written and voted on in the six week period following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Six weeks to write, discuss and vote on a law whose provisions require 342 pages to spell out is certainly a speed record for any legislature, especially the US Congress, and must be taken as prima facia evidence that very few Congressmen and Senators actually read the thing, much less discussed it in committee or on the floor of their respective chambers. The bill actually is a collection of measures that the FBI, CIA and NSA had on the shelf to widen their powers and overturn the restrictions placed on them by Congress after their last bouts of misbehavior. Some of these measures are described in full in the Act; others appear as amendments to existing laws.

It is important that we understand what is in the Act, and that we understand what is at stake in its reauthorization, and, if the present Administration has its way, its expansion. This article will provide an overview of the Act, and discuss some of its Titles. The next two articles in this series will explain some of the more controversial elements of the Act, and, in the final article, some of the proposals for renewing and amending it.

The Patriot Act consists of ten Titles, or major subdivisions. These are headed:

I.Enhancing Domestic Security Against Terrorism
II.Enhanced Surveillance Procedures
III.International Money Laundering Abatement and the Anti-Terrorist Financing Act of 2001
IV.Protecting the Border
V.Removing Obstacles to Investigating Terrorism
VI.Providing for Victims of Terrorism, Public Safety Officers, and Their Families
VII.Increased Information Sharing for Critical Infrastructure Protection
VIII.Strengthening the Criminal Laws Against Terrorism
IX.Improved Intelligence
X.Miscellaneous

The only truly noncontroversial Title is (VI.) Providing for Victims of Terrorism, Public Safety Officers, and Their Families. Despite the awkward wording of the heading (it is not victims of Public Safety Officers that are being provided for), this Title is about setting up a compensation fund for victims of crime and terrorism, and expediting payments to families of Public Safety Officers who are killed or injured by criminal or terrorist acts.

Title I sets the stages for the titles which follow. It establishes a Counterterrorism Fund, which does not expire (that is, the money does not revert to the common fund if unused in any given period of time), and which can be used to reimburse the Department of Justice for costs incurred reestablishing facilities damaged as a result of domestic or international terrorism, paying rewards, conductiong threat assessments of Federal agencies and facilities, reimbursing government agencies for the costs involved in detaining in foreign countries those accused of acts of terrorism that violate the laws of the US. This title also puts Congress on record as forbidding descrimination against Arabs and Muslims. Funds are appropriated ($200 million per year through 2004) for the FBI Technical Support Center. Presidental authority under the International Emergency Powers Act is expanded to include confiscation of property by the President, “when the United States is engaged in armed hostiilties or has been attacked by a foreign country or foreign nationals”, belonging to any foreign person, foreign organization or foreign country “that he determines has planned, authorized, aided, or engaged in such hostilities or attacks”. Finally, the last section of the Title allows the submission of any classified information used in such a determination to be submitted to the courts in secret, without conceding that courts have any right of judicial review in this matter.

This relatively innocent Title sets the theme for much that follows in the Patriot Act: expansion of the powers of government agencies, funding for their expanded roles under this Act, enhancement of the powers of the President, a leeriness about subjecting Executive actions to judicial review, and a shift in focus from foreign governments to foreign individuals.

The largest sections of the Patriot Act are II, III, and IV, with Title III taking up about a quarter of the entire number of pages. Title III is about money laundering and the international transfer of funds. This is a highly technical subject, which accounts for its bulk. This Title places restrictions on bank activities, adds record-keeping, reporting and identity verification burdens to domestic banks, and increases penalties for various money laundering related offenses. If you have tried to open a bank account in the last three years, you will have noticed the impact of some of this title's provisions. It is noteworthy that the anti money laundering provisions are as applicable to drug runners as they are to terrorists. In fact, phrasing in this Title about foreign crimes would be equally applicable to international corporations committing illegal acts. Given the tendancy of laws to expand their scope as prosecutors' requirements dictate, and the relatively loose wording of the various definitions contained here, this Title will probable be widely used, in ways its framers did not intend.

In the next article, we will deal with three of the most controversial titles: II (Enhanced Surveillance Procedures), V (Removing Obstacles to Investigating Terrorism), and VIII (Strengtheningthe Criminal Laws Against Terrorism).