Who Needs a Judge?
Hentoff, Nat
Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff Who Needs a Judge? Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is pushing a bill that hands the FBI the authority to issue...
...It could...
...But it could happen tomorrow...
...Emphasis added...
...This sounds, she said, like "carte blanche authority for an FBI fishing expedition...
...Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is pushing a bill that hands the FBI the authority to issue administrative subpoenas-without going to a judge...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...So have Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and showboat Howard Dean...
...Under the rest of this bill, you will never know that your records have been turned over pursuant to the FBI's administrative subpoena...
...When asked for evidence that the lack of such immediate bypassing of a judge has harmed national security, Caproni said: "Can we show because of delays a bomb went off...
...J. Edgar Hoover lives...
...On Roberts's Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, whom I expected to vote against the bill, went along, even though he said he had reservations...
...On the Judiciary Committee, I would never bet the farm on chairman Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania...
...Only the business or institution hit with the subpoena can challenge it...
...Eureka...
...If the bill goes through-and the President will enthusiastically sign it- keep in mind, as Eric Lichtblau noted in The New York Times, the FBI will be able "to direct postal inspectors to turn over the names, addresses, and all other material appearing on the outside of letters sent to or from people" considered "relevant" to "foreign intelligence investigations...
...These demands, as the ACLU warns, "would let the agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks, and any other business . . . without any evidence that the people whose records are swept in are involved in any criminal activity...
...Who decides the meaning of "relevant...
...The Association of the Bar of the City of New York explains: "Because these third-party recipients are immunized from liability for compliance with the subpoena, they will have little incentive to undertake the burden of challenging the subpoena to protect the interests of persons who records" are taken...
...Speaking plainly, Bob Barr (who works for both the ACLU and the American Conservative Union) said that this bill "would essentially render the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures completely meaningless...
...The FBI, of course...
...During an earlier hearing on this bill, the FBI's general counsel Valerie Caproni insisted- as has the President-that these instant administrative subpoenas are essential to nab suspected terrorists before they can act...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...But Alberto Gonzales approves...
...The Senators from my state-Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton-have, as usual, been silent while the Bill of Rights is being mugged...
...Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who has been the Justice Department's poster Senator in support of the Patriot Act, woke up...
...So it's up to Pat Leahy, Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, and others to recapture the Fourth Amendment...
...Roberts moved fast to get the bill through his intelligence committee to forestall any action by the Judiciary Committee, which also has jurisdiction over the future of the Patriot Act...
...But watch this: Third-party recipients are absolved from any harm that may come to the fishes caught in the proposed law's net...
...Moreover, all in the interest of ferreting out ghostly terrorists, the FBI will get "broad new powers to track people's mail," says the ACLU...
...As Lisa Graves, a valuable recent addition to the ACLU Washington staff, emphasizes: "I guess now we'll have to see whether the people on the Judiciary Committee will have the political courage to stand up to this...
Vol. 69 • August 2005 • No. 8
