Patriot Act of 2001 casts wide net

Long-sought details have begun to emerge from the Justice Department on how anti-terrorist provisions of the USA Patriot Act were applied in nonterror investigations, just as battle lines are being drawn on proposed new powers in a Patriot Act II.

Overall, the policy now allows evidence to be used for prosecuting common criminals even when obtained under extraordinary anti-terrorism powers and information-sharing between intelligence agencies and the FBI.

“We would use whatever tools are available to us, within reason, to prosecute violations of any law,” Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said in the wake of his department’s massive report to Congress describing how the USA Patriot Act is being implemented.

The information was a response to doubts, not from outspoken civil liberties groups, but from Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and the House Judiciary Committee chairman who publicly pushed for its speedy 337-79 House passage.

“We had something to do with encouraging Chairman Sensenbrenner to express our concerns,” said Timothy Edgar, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel. The ACLU spearheaded opposition to sections that could let the government obtain vast amounts of information that infringe on constitutional rights.

“It’s clear that the problems of 9/11 were the result of not analyzing information we had already collected. Creating more hay to search through the haystack is not an effective way to find the needle,” Mr. Edgar said in an interview.

“It’s impossible for anyone to make the case that our civil liberties were the problem,” agreed Lee Tien, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

Key objections include authorizing FBI agents to monitor mosques, which the Justice Department said was done only by 20 percent of FBI’s 45 field offices; access to business records, which they say includes files at libraries and bookstores; and expanding CIA influence over domestic intelligence by authorizing the agency to request individual surveillance.

The Justice Department takes the position that grand juries have long had the power to subpoena bookstore and library records, and that the Patriot Act merely expanded that authority to anti-terror and foreign intelligence probes.

Mr. Tien said the Patriot Act corrected a general belief that the long-standing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was restricted to terrorist activity.

“It is now much easier to use FISA surveillance in an investigation for a law-enforcement purpose,” he said, but he added that authorities rarely cross that line.

Without acknowledging such objections, Attorney General John Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee in an appearance Thursday to consult on guidelines for future investigations that September 11 proved the FBI must prevent crime, and not just wait for new outrages.

But Mr. Ashcroft always was emphatic about the law’s purpose and on Oct. 25, 2001, told the U.S. Mayors Conference that he supported applying to terrorists Robert Kennedy’s stated policy to arrest organized crime figures for “spitting on the sidewalk” if need be.

“We will use every available statute. We will seek every prosecutorial advantage,” Mr. Ashcroft said that day before the Patriot Act was signed into law. On June 5 he asked that those powers be expanded.

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