Fwd: PATRIOT Act mission creep

[Guest guest]

Numerous links in original.

 

http://www.reason.com/hod/jb022306.shtml

 

February 23, 2006

Making a Meth of the PATRIOT Act

Legislative mission creep will turn runny noses and lobster fishing

into terrorist acts

John Berlau

 

If you thought al Qaeda or Iraqi insurgents were the major threats

facing America, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) says you're wrong.

According to Dent, " The growing availability of methamphetamine is a

form of terrorism unto itself. " Many of Dent's colleagues apparently

agree, so they've attached surveillance, " smuggling " , and " money

laundering " provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

 

These vast new police powers, contained in a new " Combat

Methamphetamine Act " (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in

the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism. One proposal

could place millions of Americans who purchase cold medicine on a

huge government watch list; another could broaden powers that have

been used to prosecute people for catching lobsters whose tails are

too short. What could possibly be Congress' motivation in adding

stuff like this to a mammoth piece of counterterrorism legislation

(ironically, as part of an agreement negotiated with wavering

Senators to put more checks on the government's PATRIOT Act powers)?

The answer is, to tweak the parlance of pundits, very September 10th.

The CMA pushes Congress's favorite pre-9/11 bipartisan activity:

escalating the never-ending War on Drugs.

 

Ironically, some Democrats who objected to National Security Agency

wiretaps in December actually championed provisions that step on

privacy in the name of stopping meth. Sen. Dianne Feinstein,

(D-Calif.), who voted for a filibuster after the revelation of the

National Security Agency's domestic spying program in December,

co-sponsored the CMA and helped insert it into the PATRIOT Act

conference report after failed attempts to pass it through other

legislation. The new provisions were stalled with the filibuster and

temporary PATRIOT extensions, but now appear to be poised for passage

with the compromise bill.

 

The CMA would move cold medicines such as Sudafed behind the counter,

on the grounds that their active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a

potential meth component. In DiFi's words, the solution to this

non-problem would include " requiring purchasers to show

identification and sign a log book. "

 

Once you sign for your medicine, your name becomes part of " a

functional monitoring program " that would " allow law enforcement

officials to track and ultimately prevent suspicious buying behavior

of ingredients for meth production, " according to a Feinstein press

release describing a similar stand-alone bill.

 

Provisions such as these have already been enacted at the state

level, and they've attracted criticism from groups not normally

opposed to strong measures in the war on terror or the war on drugs.

The conservative groups Frontiers of Freedom and the American

Legislative Exchange Council, along with Dennis Vacco, New York

State's Republican former Attorney General, have criticized state

bans on over-the-counter cold medicine.

 

But the federal CMA goes further than even many of the state laws

have. In North Carolina, a state not notorious for being soft on

drugs, lawmakers exempted liquid and gelcap forms of medicines with

pseudoephedrine, as well as children's versions of the medicine, from

behind-the-counter rules. The federal CMA makes no such exceptions.

 

The PATRIOT Act's new anti-meth provisions don't end there. One would

classify " methamphetamine precursors " such as pseudoephedrine in the

same manner as " Schedule II " drugs " like opium in order to set

domestic " production quotas. " And there are enhanced penalties and

broadened definitions for " smuggling " and " money laundering " with no

terrorism prerequisites.

 

The Heritage Foundation, which supports the PATRIOT Act and general

drug-control measures, nevertheless charges that even the current

loose definitions of money laundering and smuggling are leading to

the " overcriminalization " of petty regulatory violations. A Heritage

paper cites an astonishing example of how far combating meth could

take the PATRIOT Act from its ostensible business of combating

terrorism. Fisherman David McNab is now serving a multi-year sentence

because smuggling and money laundering charges were tacked on to a

minor environmental violation in bagging lobsters that were less than

5.5 inches in length. " The lobsters were 'smuggled' in plastic bags

for all to see, " Heritage authors Paul Rosenzweig and Ellen S. Podgor

note. " The proceeds from the sale of the lobsters were 'laundered'

because they were deposited in a bank. " (A good description of the

McNab case is also available in Gene Healy's Cato Institute book Go

Directly to Jail: The Crminalization of Almost Everything, but one

detail is worth noting here: McNab wasn't even guilty of attacking

American lobster interests: He was fishing in Honduras, and the

smuggling charge stems from his violation of the " Lacey Act, " a law

that prohibits importation of wildlife that was taken in violation of

foreign law.)

 

Sadly, even with some checks on the PATRIOT Act, these new

liberty-threatening items are poised to slip by as " bipartisan " and

" non-controversial. " But one force that might stop them is a

coalition of genuine civil libertarian critics of the PATRIOT Act

combined with PATRIOT supporters who think that new anti-terrorism

powers should be limited to terrorism cases. For if bending the

PATRIOT Act to combat meth isn't legislative mission creep, nothing

is.

 

John Berlau is a fellow in economic policy at the Competitive

Enterprise Institute.