empty rhetoric

On his site for “privacy and personal” liberty issues, Ron Paul has a special section devoted to maligning and challenging the U.S. PATRIOT Act, which very few people have even read (including, if you believe Michael Moore, much of Congress) or really understand. Paul writes that the PATRIOT Act:

• Expanded the federal government’s ability to use wiretaps without judicial oversight;
• Allowed nationwide search warrants non-specific to any given location, nor subject to any local judicial oversight;
• Made it far easier for the government to monitor private internet usage;
• Authorized “sneak and peek” warrants enabling federal authorities to search a person’s home, office, or personal property without that person’s knowledge; and
• Required libraries and bookstores to turn over records of books read by their patrons.

Firstly, I think its worth noting that the PATRIOT Act has perhaps the worst name of any Congressional legislation ever passed– or at the very least, the most ominous. If there is anything Orwellian about the legislation (and I contend there isn’t much), the name certainly is it. A better name has been suggested by Rich Lowry at National Review Online: The Aschcroft-Reno Anti-Terror Act– TARATA– which in acronym form sounds like a Japanese toy rather than a blood-encrusted hammer of political oppression.

But enough about that– lets explore Paul’s claims in reverse order, for no other reason than the last assertion is the most obvious example of Paul’s tendency to use fear-mongering tactics while at once decrying them from his political opponents.

The reference to “libraries and bookstores” is no doubt speaking of the infamous section 215, which, I might add, suspiciously doesn’t reference the word “library” (indeed, in the entirety of the document has no mention of them). This, in and of itself, obviously doesn’t counter Paul’s assertions that libraries could become targets of the PATRIOT Act– however, it is useful to note at this juncture that the PATRIOT Act has not been used to obtain library records since its passage 45 days after the 9/11 attacks.

Indeed, this all begs the question as to whether libraries should be required to turn over records– after all, Paul assumes in this section that indeed it would be a disastrous blow to civil liberties if it were. This article over at NRO (by the illustrious Deroy Murdock) makes the case why libraries do represent a staging ground for terrorists. An excerpt:

The 9/11 Commission Report discusses the man who smashed United Flight 175 into 2 World Trade Center: “[Marwan al-] Shehhi and other members of the group used to frequent a library in Hamburg [Germany] to use the Internet.”

• “[Angela] Duile said Atta, al-Shehhi and other Arabs regularly came to the Hamburg library where she worked,” the Associated Press reported last November 10. The Hamburg Technical University librarian testified in 9/11 associate Mounir el Motassadeq’s German retrial. She echoed her initial-trial testimony about an early 1999 anti-American outburst in which she said al-Shehhi bragged, “Something will happen, and there will be thousands of dead.” Duile added: “He mentioned the World Trade Center.” Sure enough, that’s where al-Shehhi helped murder 2,749 innocents.
• A page A-1, September 30, 2001, Washington Post story explained that hijacker Mohand Alshehri came from a poor Saudi family but “was facile enough with computers that he could use the Internet at a Delray Beach public library.”
• While learning to fly, the Los Angeles Times reported on its front page on September 27, 2001, “Atta used computers at the public library and worked out at a Delray Beach health club.”
• These September 11 hijackers were not the only terrorists who used libraries as tactical assets.
• “[I]n January and February ‘04, I went myself, personally, to South Waziristan and handed over money to, and supplies to a high ranking al-Qaeda official,” Mohammad Junaid Babar confessed last June 3 in Manhattan federal court while pleading guilty to giving terrorists material support. “I provided some of the materials, like I mentioned, aluminum nitrate, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum powder” Babar elucidated, for bombings that al-Qaeda allegedly envisioned for pubs, restaurants, and train stations in London.

…

Congress should add “library” to the Patriot Act, one place that word does not appear. Its absence has not deterred detractors from labeling the Act’s Section 215 as “the Library Provision.” This phrase is as invented as the light bulb. Section 215 allows the FBI to ask federal judges for “access to certain business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.” Unfortunately, domestic terrorism inquiries are verboten. Fortunately, so are those “conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.”

The Justice Department seems needlessly skittish about potentially equipping agents with search warrants and dispatching them to libraries to foil the mass murder of Americans. Justice “has not sought a Section 215 order to obtain library or bookstore records,” an April DOJ fact sheet declares—twice.

So known terrorists– not merely the nebulous “evildoers” that are never named– who have committed real acts of terrorism, not merely “might”, have used the anonymity of libraries to stage attacks on innocents on multiple occasions. Why then shouldn’t library records be targeted– especially since the “patrons” that Ron Paul speaks of must have known contact with militant organizations or a hostile foreign entity to even be considered under the “library provision” of the PATRIOT Act? Paul makes it seem as if you are in danger of having your library records pulled at a whim– a deliberate distortion, that is, unless “you” are in close contact with Al Qaeda, or if you’re the Unibomber or the infamous “Zodiac” killer– both of whom were caught in part by legally-obtained library records– before, I might add, the passage of the PATRIOT Act.

Excellent information on this topic that further elucidates it can be found here, here, and here.

But I digress.

Lets’ move on to Paul’s next bit of fear-mongering: the so-called “sneak and peek” warrants, which, it turns out, have been a staple of law enforcement activities domestically for years. The Volokh Conspiracy writes about an ACLU ad that attempted to make the same assertion:

The ACLU’s advertisement makes it sound like the Patriot Act introduced sneak-and-peek warrants. But it didn’t. The courts have interpreted the Fourth Amendment and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow sneak-and-peek warrants since the 1980s. See, e.g., United States v. Freitas, 800 F.2d 1451 (9th Cir. 1986); United States v. Villegas, 899 F.2d 1423 (2d Cir. 1990); United States v. Simons, 206 F.3d 392 (4th Cir. 2000). The Patriot Act explicitly codified powers that the courts had created by judicial interpretations of Rule 41 before the Patriot Act. On balance, the Patriot Act did expand the sneak-and-peek authority slightly: but it’s quite incorrect to suggest that the Patriot Act created this authority.

…

The same Fourth Amendment protections that apply to the execution of other warrants also apply to sneak-and-peek warrants. The ACLU advertisement says that “the government can secretly enter your home while you’re away . . . rifle through your personal belongings . . . download your computer files . . . and seize any items at will.” But they can’t. The Patriot Act does not authorize such a search, and such a search would plainly violate the Fourth Amendment.

Its not unreasonable to assume that Paul is aware of this, and chooses not to note it. At the very least, whatever press staffer vetted the linked page should have caught it: the Paul campaign, in this instance is either dishonest or incompetent, neither of which bodes well for a man running for President.

The next three points are vague and unsubstantiated. Presumably Paul is forgetting to note the massive amounts of FISA clearance that this requires– and the fact that, once again, in order to execute this sort of surveillance, the government must prove that someone is in communication with a hostile foreign entity. The merits of that ability aside, to deliberately avoid noting it, not only on this page, but in major policy speeches, is again manipulative and dishonest. Google my site for “FISA” to see more information on why Ron Paul is utterly wrong on this matter.

All in all, the hallmark of Ron Paul’s campaign seems to be the outright manipulation of complex issues in order to engender the perception amongst his adherence that the government is out-of-control in the area of privacy. As can be seen, while there remains a vigorous debate about surveillance, it is not the nightmare scenario that Paul paints. By all appearances, it seems doubtful that anyone at the Paul campaign has even read the Patriot Act– or worse, that they have, and the only individual’s privacy rights they are claiming to protect are Al Qaeda operatives working within the borders of the United States.

Am I suggesting that Paul is actively and knowingly abetting terrorists? Absolutely not. I am suggesting, however, that the end result of his policies would only serve protect the “rights” of individuals working with hostile foreign entities– which in almost every case is the litmus test by which the types of surveillance he so ardently opposes are authorized. Ordinary Americans have nothing to fear from the PATRIOT Act– they should, however, be concerned that dishonest and manipulative politicians like Ron Paul will be successful in their campaign to eradicate it.