Bob Barr for the Defense.
Hentoff, Nat
Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff Bob Barr for the Defense On February 4, New York City became the 250th "civil liberties safe zone"-a designation by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in...
...And Section 213 is not subject to the "sunset" provision of the Patriot Act that permits parts of it to be reviewed by Congress in December 2005...
...Frighteningly" Barr continued, "the Attorney General himself admitted that 215 could be used to obtain even genetic information...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Editor & Publisher, and The Progressive...
...Section 215 is also not part of the "sunset" clause...
...This represents a fundamental change in federal criminal law-rather than allowing such warrants to be issued only in emergency situations at the discretion of individual judges, based on articulated exigent circumstances" (the pre-9/11 status...
...While much has-appropriately-been written about this provision's chilling effect on library users (a result that is very real regardless of how many times the government says it has or hasn't employed the power), its reach extends far beyond just libraries...
...He is the author of the recently published book "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...And those omnivorous searches, Barr added, are conducted "without probable cause to believe any wrongdoing is under way...
...So much for the Fourth Amendment...
...Section 213, he told the New York City Council, "authorizes so-called sneak and peek [broad-based] searches and seizures, which allow an indeterminate delay in notifying the subject that a search has occurred and evidence seized...
...And if you thought that Congress had effectively killed the Defense Department's Operation TIPS (whose converged private and law-enforcement databases would have put your private lives in its computers), Bob Barr's testimony refuted that illusion...
...Of all the testimonies submitted to the New York City Council that passed the resolution, the most persuasive was that of former Congressman Bob Barr, a conservative libertarian who is now a privacy consultant for the American Civil Liberties Union as well as the Twenty-first Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union...
...It should have been...
...As for the more familiar Section 215, Barr emphasized that it does not apply only to libraries and bookstores...
...One he cited was the MATRIX program (Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange...
...During the Clinton Administration, when I lauded Barr for being the only member of Congress to oppose, on the floor, the FBI's successful legislation to permit roving wiretaps on any phone, I was scorned and rebuked by some liberals for having a good word for that rightwinger...
...Operated by a private firm in Florida, it is funded, in part, by Homeland Security and the Justice Department and sells its data to the individual states...
...Furthermore, Section 213 allows these burglars with badges to enter your home or your office when you're not there for criminal investigations that are in no way related to terrorism...
...The government, he said, is now circumventing "the intent of Congress, or federal laws (such as the Privacy Act) by providing federal taxpayer funds to state or local governments to establish or implement" programs like TIPS...
...Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff Bob Barr for the Defense On February 4, New York City became the 250th "civil liberties safe zone"-a designation by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Massachusetts, which is the primary national organizer of official resolutions in towns, cities, counties, and three state legislatures condemning the Patriot Act and other Bush Administration subversions of the Bill of Rights...
...Ashcroft and his minions continually and falsely claim that this section of the Patriot Act is the same as the law before 9/11...
...Even some staunch critics of the Patriot Act are not likely to be fully aware of how radically unconstitutional are the sections of the Patriot Act that Bob Barr underlined...
...This decision by New York City- which joins Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and small, rural, conservative towns, as well as liberal city enclaves around the country-was not national news...
...But Barr, unlike some liberals in Congress, has kept the heat on this Attorney General...
...Under it," he told the New York City Council, "FBI agents have the power to demand, among other things, business information, reading histories, Internet surfing data, medical records, and . . . firearm purchasing receipts under a 'rubber-stamp' form of judicial review" from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court...
Vol. 68 • April 2004 • No. 4
