Violating the Constitution

The Patriot Act contains many anti-constitutional provisions, including:

• Section 213, which allows the government to search private property without notice to the owner (violating the Fourth Amendment);
• Section 215, which increases the government's ability to look at records held by third parties on an individual's activities (violating the Fourth Amendment);
• Section 411, which allows the Attorney General not only to designate foreign and domestic groups as terrorist organizations, but also to deport foreign nationals lawfully involved with such groups, reviving McCarthy-era "guilt by association" tactics (violating the First Amendment);
• Section 412, which allows the Attorney General to hold foreign nationals indefinitely without trial (violating the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments);
• Section 802, which creates the new crime of "domestic terrorism," targeting both foreign nationals and American citizens, and which allows the government to label peaceful protestors as "terrorists" (violating the First Amendment).

Punishing Lawful Dissent

It is clear that the "tools" which this law (according to its full title) has given to this administration, ostensibly to fight terrorism, have been used to obstruct and punish political dissent and even to justify racial profiling. Sections 411 and 412 have seldom actually been invoked, as there has been no terrorism case to be made against almost none of the government's foreign-born targets. But the Act has given false legal "cover" to the shameful and illegal detention, abuse and/or deportation of thousands of immigrants, primarily from Arab and Islamic countries. (The exact number of detainees may never be known, because John Ashcroft's Justice Department has consistently refused to release either the names or the total number.)

The story of Jaoudat Abouazza is a case in point. Arrested for motor vehicle violations in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May 2002, Abouazza, a Canadian activist (he had political leaflets in his car), was illegally held without charge and without bail for 41 days on suspicion of "terrorism" by the INS. He was subject to days of interrogation by the FBI without a lawyer present. He was beaten repeatedly (often to cries of "Taliban") and kept in solitary confinement. Several of his teeth were extracted and he was not immediately provided with antibiotics or painkillers or access to his personal physician. For five days prior to being allowed to return to Canada on a judge's order, Abouazza was held incommunicado and in lockdown for 23 hours each day.

But at least he is alive. Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian activist who was held for two years without charge before a judge released him in April, died in July of heart failure. His death was widely thought to have been a result of the strain on his health due to his imprisonment.

Spying on Lawful Activities

In June, Peace Fresno, a California protest group (profiled in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11), filed a complaint with California's Attorney General. They asked why the Fresno County Sheriff's Department had sent an "anti-terrorist" agent (identified as such in a local newspaper's obituary) under an assumed name to infiltrate their group, and whether the FBI was involved. Nonviolent protest groups in Colorado and other states have also reported being infiltrated by such agents, presumably inspired by Section 802 of the Act — a chilling reprise of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO abuses during the Vietnam War era.

Decreasing, Not Increasing, Our Security

As the example of Hoover demonstrates, politically-motivated assaults on our freedoms are nothing new. What is new are the terrifying ways, including Internet spying, in which the privacy of all of us, and our rights to due process, can now be violated. There are also enormous risks involved in wasting our resources suppressing dissent. Without compromising anyone's freedoms, the 9/11 hijackers could have been foiled by cooperation among law enforcement agencies — or by an attentive President. We believe the Patriot Act, by distracting the government from its duty to "provide for the common defense," has made it more, not less, likely that another attack may occur.

Potential for Abuse

James Madison affirmed the belief that the United States is "a nation of laws, not of men." Paradoxically, the effect of this very bad law has been to make us a nation of men, not laws. Under the Act, the President, the Attorney General or the Secretary of State variously get to decide — almost totally without judicial oversight — which organizations are enemies of the state, which persons can be detained without trial, who gets spied upon, and what kinds of protest are to be considered legitimate or not.

Yet both President Bush and Senator Kerry (who has called for a "new and improved" Patriot Act) stand firmly behind this utterly unconstitutional and arbitrary law. Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and his running mate, Pat LaMarche, call upon all citizens to demand of their elected representatives the immediate repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act.