Join the Action Alert e-mail list to stay informed about current issues and campaigns, upcoming events, and how you can get more involved in the fight to protect and expand civil liberties. The Act cuts back on Constitutional checks and balances, and Bill of Rights protections: It gives sweeping new powers of detention and surveillance to the Executive branch of government and law enforcement agencies, and depriving the Courts of meaningful judicial oversight to ensure that the law enforcement powers are not being abused.
It gives the Secretary of State the authority to designate any group, foreign or domestic, as a terrorist organization, an authority that is not subject to review. It undermines the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment by eroding the line between intelligence gathering and gathering evidence for a criminal proceeding, and expands the ability of the government to spy through wiretaps, computer surveillance, access to medical, financial, business and educational records and secret searches of homes and offices.
It undermines fair due process procedures guaranteed by the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and extended to non-citizens in over a century of US Supreme Court rulings, by permitting the government to detain non-citizens indefinitely even if they have never been convicted of a crime. Section helps law enforcement identify, disrupt, and prevent terrorist acts and money laundering activities by encouraging further cooperation among law enforcement, regulators, and financial institutions to share information regarding those suspected of being involved in terrorism or money laundering.
To facilitate the government's ability to seize illicit funds of individuals and entities located in foreign countries by authorizing the Attorney General or the Secretary of the Treasury to issue a summons or subpoena to any foreign bank that maintains a correspondent account in the U. This Section also requires U. Allows the Secretary of the Treasury to issue regulations governing maintenance of concentration accounts by financial institutions to ensure such accounts are not used to obscure the identity of the customer who is the direct or beneficial owner of the funds being moved through the account.
Prescribes regulations establishing minimum standards for financial institutions and their customers regarding the identity of a customer that shall apply with the opening of an account at the financial institution. The act and its ancillaries aid federal authorities in their efforts to close off U. Its passage has resulted in new procedures and penalties to combat domestic and international terrorism.
The definitions of crimes, such as terrorist attacks on mass transportation facilities, biological weapons offenses, the harboring of terrorists, and assisting terrorists with material or financial support, have found specific delineation within the law. Typically, the act supplemented existing laws and increased the penalties connected to them.
For example, the act provided for the establishment of alternative maximum sentences for acts of terrorism and raised the penalty for conspiracy to perpetrate an act of terrorism against the United States.
The Patriot Act has been cloaked in controversy almost since its inception, with parties on both sides of the debate claiming that the measures within the act lean to one extreme or the other. Critics do not agree: either the provisions are not doing enough or they go too far and infringe upon civil liberties and First Amendment rights. Several of the law's surveillance sections expired on December 31, , although these were extended through March 10, Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act with little reform.
On March 9, , a day before the extension was due to expire, President Bush signed it into law. The reauthorized act includes a four-year sunset clause on three specific provisions: the attainment of records such as library records , the use of wiretaps to monitor communications, and the secret surveillance of non-U.
Each of these provisions can be lawfully executed without probable cause or suspicion. The sunset clause requires re-examination of these provisions prior to further reauthorization. President Barack Obama in signed an extension on the act's key provisions. They claim the Patriot Act is essential to helping law enforcement identify leads and prevent attacks.
Despite the supposed noble intentions behind the Patriot Act, the law is still hotly debated. The federal government asserts the Patriot Act has safeguards to protect the rights of American citizens. Still, some parts of the law were found illegal by the courts. The act ended the bulk collection of all records under Section of the Patriot Act and allowed challenges to national security letter gag orders. It also required better transparency and more information sharing between the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the American people.
Bush Signs Patriot Act Renewal. CBS News. Washington Post. The Heritage Foundation. The New York Times. Surveillance Under the Patriot Act. Department of Justice Website. William J.
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