The_Dunedan

What follows are direct citations from the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, sometimes known as Patriot Act II, which has recently re-emerged in Congress and will likely be taken up when they reconvene following the inaugeration. Source: Rense.com, through the Sierra times. Commentary in italics.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on October 27, 2001. The first Patriot Act was universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum. William Safire, while writing for the New York Times, described the first Patriot Act's powers by saying that President Bush was "seizing dictatorial control." On February 7, 2003 the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan public interest think-tank in DC, revealed the full text of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. The classified document had been leaked to them by an unnamed source inside the Federal government. The document consisted of a 33 page section by section analysis of the accompanying 87 page bill.

The bill itself is stamped "Confidential - Not for Distribution." Upon reading the analysis and bill, I was stunned by the scientifically crafted tyranny contained in the legislation. The Justice Department Office of Legislative Affairs admits that they had indeed covertly transmitted a copy of the legislation to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, (R-Il) and the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney as well as the executive heads of federal law enforcement agencies.

It is important to note that no member of Congress was allowed to see the first Patriot Act before its passage, and that no debate was tolerate by the House and Senate leadership. The intentions of the White House and Speaker Hastert concerning Patriot Act II appear to be a carbon copy replay of the events that led to the unprecedented passage of the first Patriot Act.



SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a criminal act for any member of the government or any citizen to release any information concerning the incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also states that law enforcement does not even have to tell the press who they have arrested and they never have to release the names.

SECTION 301 and 306 (Terrorist Identification Database) set up a national database of "suspected terrorists" and radically expand the database to include anyone associated with suspected terrorist groups and anyone involved in crimes or having supported any group designated as "terrorist." These sections also set up a national DNA database for anyone on probation or who has been on probation for any crime, and orders State governments to collect the DNA for the Federal government.

SECTION 312 gives immunity to law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people and would place substantial restrictions on court injunctions against Federal violations of civil rights across the board.

SECTION 101 will designate individual terrorists as foreign powers and again strip them of all rights under the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 102 states clearly that any information gathering, regardless of whether or not those activities are illegal, can be considered to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power. This makes news gathering illegal.

SECTION 103 allows the Federal government to use wartime martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring that a state of war exists.

SECTION 106 is bone-chilling in its straightforwardness. It states that broad general warrants by the secret FSIA court (a panel of secret judges set up in a star chamber system that convenes in an undisclosed location) granted under the first Patriot Act are not good enough. It states that government agents must be given immunity for carrying out searches with no prior court approval. This section throws out the entire Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.

SECTION 109 allows secret star chamber courts to issue contempt charges against any individual or corporation who refuses to incriminate themselves or others. This sections annihilate the last vestiges of the Fifth Amendment.

SECTION 110 restates that key police state clauses in the first Patriot Act were not sunsetted and removes the five year sunset clause from other subsections of the first Patriot Act. After all, the media has told us: "This is the New America. Get used to it. This is forever."

SECTION 111 expands the definition of the "enemy combatant" designation.

SECTION 122 restates the government's newly announced power of "surveillance without a court order."

SECTION 123 restates that the government no longer needs warrants and that the investigations can be a giant dragnet-style sweep described in press reports about the Total Information Awareness Network. One passage reads, "thus the focus of domestic surveillance may be less precise than that directed against more conventional types of crime."

*Note: Over and over again, in subsection after subsection, the second Patriot Act states that its new Soviet-type powers will be used to fight international terrorism, domestic terrorism and other types of crimes. Of course the government has already announced in Section 802 of the first USA Patriot act that any crime is considered domestic terrorism.

SECTION 126 grants the government the right to mine the entire spectrum of public and private sector information from bank records to educational and medical records. This is the enacting law to allow ECHELON and the Total Information Awareness Network to break down any and all walls of privacy. The government states that they must look at everything to "determine" if individuals or groups might have a connection to terrorist groups. As you can now see, you are guilty until proven innocent.

SECTION 127 allows the government to takeover coroners' and medical examiners' operations whenever they see fit. See how this is like Bill Clinton's special medical examiner he had in Arkansas that ruled that people had committed suicide when their arms and legs had been cut off.

SECTION 128 allows the Federal government to place gag orders on Federal and State Grand Juries and to take over the proceedings. It also disallows individuals or organizations to even try to quash a Federal subpoena. So now defending yourself will be a terrorist action.

SECTION 129 destroys any remaining whistle blower protection for Federal agents.

SECTION 202 allows corporations to keep secret their activities with toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials.

SECTION 205 allows top Federal officials to keep all their financial dealings secret, and anyone investigating them can be considered a terrorist. This should be very useful for Dick Cheney to stop anyone investigating Haliburton.

SECTION 303 sets up national DNA database of suspected terrorists. The database will also be used to "stop other unlawful activities." It will share the information with state, local and foreign agencies for the same purposes.

SECTION 311 federalizes your local police department in the area of information sharing.

SECTION 313 provides liability protection for businesses, especially big businesses that spy on their customers for Homeland Security, violating their privacy agreements. It goes on to say that these are all preventative measures - has anyone seen Minority Report? This is the access hub for the Total Information Awareness Network.

SECTION 321 authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people and to share information with foreign governments.

SECTION 322 removes Congress from the extradition process and allows officers of the Homeland Security complex to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish. It also allows Homeland Security to secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.

SECTION 402 is titled "Providing Material Support to Terrorism." The section reads that there is no requirement to show that the individual even had the intent to aid terrorists.

SECTION 403 expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.

SECTION 404 makes it a crime for a terrorist or "other criminals" to use encryption in the commission of a crime.

SECTION 408 creates "lifetime parole" (basically, slavery) for a whole host of crimes.

SECTION 410 creates no statute of limitations for anyone that engages in terrorist actions or supports terrorists. Remember: any crime is now considered terrorism under the first Patriot Act.

SECTION 411 expands crimes that are punishable by death. Again, they point to Section 802 of the first Patriot Act and state that any terrorist act or support of terrorist act can result in the death penalty.

SECTION 421 increases penalties for terrorist financing. This section states that any type of financial activity connected to terrorism will result to time in prison and $10-50,000 fines per violation.

SECTION 427 sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in terrorist activities. There are many other sections that I did not cover in the interest of time. The American people were shocked by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation in modern world history.

dksuddeth

Do you have a link that shows this was recently re-introduced into congress for passing?

Ustwo

Perhaps if you had the real bill instead of what someone says it does cut and pasted perhaps we could have a discussion.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

KMA-628

yeah, that looks more like an opinion of the bill rather than....

I didn't see anything to support the original poster's claims.

djtestudo

If the first Patriot Act was half as bad as a lot of people claim, I would be unable to type this sentance right now without risking my freedom.

Seeing as how I am not in a gulag in Alaska, and have not had a single aspect of my life changed in the entire time the Patriot act has been in effect, I'm not exactly sure what the fuss is about.

As for this new act, if it is as claimed, it won't make it past Congress, and even so will get shot down by the Supreme Court, because it risks both groups' powers in the government.

Something tells me from past experiance, though, that it is not as claimed.

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

KMA-628

Here is a link to the guy's website that is mentioned: Linky

Here is the actual website were this "direct citation" came from:

Brief Analysis - Domestic
Security Enhancement Act 2003
Also Known As USA Patriot Act II
By Alex Jones
infowars.com
11-22-4

I would say that the original poster isn't trying to be very upfront about this.

KMA-628

I skimmed through the "papers" written by the Center for Public Integrity, hardly non-partisan (when attacking 527's, it attacks only 527's that supported Bush).

I would guess that further research into the founders of the CPI would prove even more.

This thread, at this point, is bullshit and has been proven so.

Edit:

Here is an example from the CPI, the "source" for non-partisan information



Funny, I don't see any reference to Soros here.....must've been a mistake.

The_Dunedan

Text of the DSEA can be found here:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtawe...0703_Doc_1.pdf

I take everything from Alex Jones with a LARGE grain of salt, but he's hit a homer on this one. My "direct citation" referred to the citation numbers; I did not intend to be misleading.

phukraut

Regarding Section 202: It seemed a bit alarmist, so I looked at the document you provided, The_Dunedan. It's not quite so black and white. It says that worst case scenarios will, in regards to the public, only be accessible to those in the region which the worst case scenario affects, and only in "read-only" methods (I have no idea what this implies). In other words, things aren't completely secret.

However, one could foresee a corporation doing massive polluting around a small community in Alaska, and only those people would be allowed to know about it. That is pretty bad news still.

Another point: Why is this in the DSEA anyway? Well apparently terrorists could get a hold of this vital "worst case scenario" information and use it to set up a disaster.

The actual content follows (from page 14):

Kadath

This is my favorite debate tactic; attack the source rather than debate the issue.

__________________
it's quiet in here

KMA-628

Hey Kadath -

If I claimed something to be a "direct citation" and then quoted an opinion piece that was nothing but "direct citation", you would've spanked me around as well. And you would've continued spanking me around if I was trying to bully around the issue.

Once the door is opened, it is hard to close it. This guy had his entire post torn up because he mis-represented facts. There is no confusion between opinion of a law and actual citation of the law itself. Once the basic premise is in doubt, every thing else is in doubt as well.

You should know me by now to know that I am usually pretty fair, opinionated and biased, yes, but fair most of the time as well.

The_Dunedan

KMA:
In your rush to attack the source, I don't know if you noticed but:

1: I apologized for my badly-worded "direct citation" quote.
2: Provided a source for the entire draft version of the DSEA.
3: Advised readers to take other items from the author of the originally quoted piece "with a large grain of salt."

As for the biased nature of my second source: of course it's biased, it's a political think-tank! I wouldn't go to the Cato Institute for information supporting income taxation; I also wouldn't go to a Bush-supporting site for info on Ashcroft's pet projects. Both sides have evidences and opinions which contain the truth; find it is what's hard. As for your Soros comment; I despise the man. However, I'm not sure he was involved with the 527's this time around; was he?

dksuddeth

Dunedan, we all know this was a bill that was being 'researched' (using that term loosely because we all know ashcroft used it when the draft was leaked) back early last year, but I asked you if there was a link that states this is being re-introduced. I've yet to see that.

The_Dunedan

dksuddeth;
Still looking. I may be looking at older material; if so, I retract my statement that this bill had been re-introduced.

Seaver

My favorite debate tactic is presenting a source which holds no actual truths while presented under the premise of being factual based... oh wait.

The_Dunedan

Seaver:
Debate the material, if possible. You'll notice that I've provided the text of the bill itself and have retracted my poorly-chosen wording of the initial post. The commentaries on the cited sections, in the first post, are debateable; as is the status of the DSEA itself. However, the fact is that I have made the text of the bill available. Debate that, please; not my own admittedly poor choice of words.

KMA-628

I hadn't seen any of your responses when I was going after (a) what you wrote and (b) what you were providing as a source.

I still find it questionable that the original post declaring "direct citation" was a boo-boo as so claimed. It is usually pretty apparent when you are reading actual pieces of legislation because you wake up two hours later with drool all over your keyboard. I find it highly questionable that you made a mistake in your original post. I think it was just copied over as fact.

Personally, I think you should've let this one die and try again with better information. Those of us that read this in the beginning already doubt any claims made here, so furthering the argument is going to be a waste of everybody's time. I would chalk this one up to a "learning experience" (which we have all gone through here) and try again, some other day, with a better starting post.

Ustwo

I read through section 129 and didn't see a problem.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

hammer4all

What a bunch of unsubstantiated BS. You can freely see who Soros contributed to right here. Most of it went to ACT (an on-the-ground operation) and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 which in tern mostly went into the Media Fund. Meanwhile Bush, like usual, has been bought and paid for by large multinational corporations. Where is the outrage there? If you were at all familiar with CPI you'd know they routinely criticize both parties in their well researched reports. They even wrote a book this year on who was bankrolling whom.

"How does one report the facts in an unbiased way when the facts themselves are biased?" -- Rob Corddry, The Daily Show

Indeed.

Kadath

I don't think you know me well enough to say what I would have done, since I don't know what I'll do in any given situation. I admit that the source he quoted was biased, but perhaps we could instead discuss DSEA instead of saying "this post is bullshit" and slamming the doors on discussion.

Oh. Well, maybe not then.

Can I make this my signature? It's either a great joke or a hilarious miscue.

And now we're totally thrown off the topic by an attack on the source and hopelessly weighed down in partisan bickering. It's like a microcosm of the American political system here, people!

__________________
it's quiet in here

dksuddeth

So, if a fed agent sees something happening thats illegal, its ok with you if that agent is harassed, fired, maybe even indicted for something related?

Can you say totalitarian?

aliali

Part of the problem as I see it is the header "Defend this." I only looked on this thread b/c it looked like another left-leaning-how-can-you-even-possibly-agree-with-this-bad-stuff-our-gov't-is-doing question. Although I often disagree with the issue presented, I also often find it very defensible and worthy of honest debate. This thread is like the Ohio poverty "Defend this" thread. Turns out Ohio is better than average in most of the poverty statistics raised in the study at issue. Turns out that the post here has more opinion than fact and the poster agrees we should take it with a grain of salt. If that is the case, I suggest that "Debate this" rather than "Defend this" is a far more appropriate lead in.

To Defend it, you first have to recognize the source for what it is, make your own determination as to the facts, then, if you don't agree with the facts as presented, describe the facts as you understand them, decide whether or not to defend the real facts or the grain of salt facts presented, and then orient the reader to which facts you are dealing with and whether or not you defend it. Seems like a long way around to argue about the patriot act.

KMA-628

I know this forum well enough to state that I would be spanked and I doubt that you would not partake. Can you honestly say you wouldn't have gone after me if I posted something right-wing in this manner. C'mon, now, the BS level in this thread is starting to get pretty deep.

Does this thread have much merit right now? Nope.
Locate Aliali's post - what is his first impression of this thread?
What is the impression that anybody who reads this thread for the first will get?
Open and honest debate is hard to bring back into a train wreck like this one.

Ahh, no.

What about my point do you not get? I thought it was fairly simple and clear. Other than this thread where have I been unfair? Where have I needlessly attacked someone? Yes, I am opinionated. Yes, I am biased. At least I am willing to come into this conversation and any other conversation and admit that, up front, honestly. I am probably one of the more fair on my side. Can I get caught up in a heated argument? Sure. But usually I keep my cool. This one just royally pissed me off from the first two words of the thread title, the blatent misrepresenting of facts and the coy comeback of, oops, I made a boo-boo. Like it was an accident

I don't hide it and try to pass off my posts as unpartisan.

/in response to the other thread by someone else (can't remember who and don't care enough to scroll down. On that HUGE graphic that was center stage on the 527 article by CPI, where do you Soros? Sure you may find mention of him in a different story, but where, in this story, is Soros and his millions and all of his 527's. I didn't ask if anyone could find Soros in a different story, I asked where Soros was on this graphic that was prominently displayed on the CPI article.

Kadath

"You should know me by now to know that I am usually pretty fair, opinionated and biased, yes, but fair most of the time as well."

From the Oxford Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus:

fair -- adj. 1. just; unbiased; equitable; in accordance with the rules.

That's why it was funny. You didn't appear to know the definition of the word fair.

__________________
it's quiet in here

Locobot

I think "read-only" in this case means no photocopies. Kind of confusing for us computer-savvy types. At first I was thinking "read-only as opposed to what? read-write?"

sob

This thread was a loser once the first post was discredited.

Now you want to parse the word "fair."

KMA is right. Somebody shoot this thread.

Kadath

Maybe you should write eight responses in a row. That oughta kill it.

__________________
it's quiet in here

SiN

fair enough. *bang!*

...anyways, if any of you, including the starter, care to re-do this subject in a better fashion, by all means.

/me puts this thread out of our misery

__________________