Silence Can Be Turned Into Criminal Offense/Patriot Act abuses plain

[Guest guest]

Silence Can Be Turned Into Criminal Offense

http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/june2004/062104criminaloffense.htm

KABC-TV | June 21 2004

 

One lawyer says the government will now be able to " turn a person's silence

into a criminal offense. "

 

A sharply-divided Supreme Court has ruled five-to-four that Americans have

no constitutional right to keep quiet when police ask for their names.

 

Privacy rights advocates say the ruling essentially opens a can of worms,

forcing people who haven't done anything wrong to give information that can

be used in broad data searches.

 

The head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says the modern age

means police get " an extraordinary look " into somebody's private life simply

by getting their identification.

 

But the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation says officers will only be able to

demand I-D from people suspected of criminal involvement.

 

The case involved a Nevada rancher who was arrested after refusing multiple

requests to give an officer his name.

 

 

 

 

Patriot Act abuses plain

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2004/062204patriotactabuses.htm

Long Beach Press-Telegram | June 22 2004

 

Reader Peter Alvarez says John Ashcroft " is probably the most qualified

attorney general this country has ever had. "

 

He said this in a letter to our editor Thursday, and challenged me to

provide " examples of abuses involving the Patriot Act. "

 

While Ashcroft does not share the Justice Department's case files with me, I

still must wonder, Mr. Alvarez, what planet you have been living on.

 

Where were you these past three years while, amid considerable publicity,

our government was imprisoning people without making charges against them,

holding them without trials, and not allowing them to talk to attorneys?

 

Where were you when Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer suspected of

involvement in bombings in Spain, was held for two weeks without being

charged until freed on evidence supplied by the Spanish government?

 

Where were you when, only six weeks after 9/11, the Congress made it legal

to search your prescriptions, e-mails, bank and library records not because

you are a suspicious person, but because someone who sent you an e-mail may

be deemed a suspicious person?

 

Those latter developments, of course, came out of the Patriot Act, a

document your letter said, is " long overdue. "

 

Conservative view

 

In looking at the Patriot Act, let me yield to John Whitehead. He is an

ultra conservative and constitutional lawyer who heads the Rutherford

Institute and who represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit

against President Bill Clinton.

 

Unlike you, Mr. Alvarez, Whitehead has real concerns about the direction the

United States is taking in general and about the Patriot Act in particular.

 

" The Bush administration appears to be fighting two wars, " he says. " The

first is the so-called war on terrorism. The second is a more ominous war

against the privacy and freedom of the average American. "

 

He calls the Patriot Act a " 140-page monstrosity' and says its quick passage

a month and a half after 9/11 suggests it " must have been sitting on a

bureaucratic shelf somewhere just waiting to be enacted. "

 

A new era

 

Whitehead makes these points:

 

- The Act " changes the standards for search warrants. " They no longer have

to be served in person. Federal agents are now free to snoop around your

house. " You will probably never know they were there. "

 

- No judge or court order is required for the government to obtain a

subpoena to search your records held by a library, bookstore, church, bank,

or whatever.

 

- " Clearly, the FBI an agency that in recent years has been under constant

investigation for alleged corruptness is not only spying on the bad guys.

This is citizen surveillance, pure and simple. "

 

It is not the intent of this column to promote John Kerry for president. But

I do wonder about the ramifications of a second term when George W. Bush no

longer has to curry political favor with the electorate.

 

And when John Ashcroft, wielding one terror alert after another, can further

intimidate the America people.

 

And when people like you, Mr. Alvarez, will continue to readily surrender

your rights and freedoms in the misguided notion that doing so will create a

stronger, better nation.

 

Get a grip, sir.