Fisking the USA PATRIOT Act, Part I
Last night, I watched the episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! which talked about the USA PATRIOT Act. I wondered, "What does it really do? What does it really say?" Any person who has time, resources, and a basic understanding of legal jargon can wade through the USA PATRIOT Act. The time required is devoting to cross-referencing changes in the U.S. Code with the changes listed in the legislation. The resources required are minimal: the text of the USA PATRIOT Act obtained from the ACLU's website, and an online copy of the U.S. Code, available from Cornell University's Legal Information Institute.
I decided to make this a sort of a serial, since each title of the USA PATRIOT Act is pretty big. But while I'm going through another title, I'll post my "fisking" of the previous title here. My objective summary of the legislation's text is in black. My sardonic comments are in red. Let's begin!
TITLE I – ENHANCING DOMESTIC SECURITY AGAINST TERRORISM
Sec. 101
Establishes a “counterterrorism fund” to “[provide] support to counter, investigate, or prosecute domestic or international terrorism.”
Sec. 102
Expresses the Sense of Congress that there is discrimination against Muslim and Arab Americans following September 11, 2001 and condemns “acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans.”
A lot of legislation puts this "sense of Congress" crapola in there. It's basically Congress's official stance on a particular issue. It's not legally binding, but in interpreting the law, courts could go to sections like this to find out what the intent of the legislation was.
Sec. 103
Increases funding for the FBI’s Technical Support Center.
Sec. 104
Amends § 2332e of 18 U.S.C. This portion of the United States Code deals with “Requests for military assistance to enforce prohibition in certain emergencies.” This is the original text:
The Attorney General may request the Secretary of Defense to provide assistance under section 382 of title 10 in support of Department of Justice activities relating to the enforcement of section 2332a of this title during an emergency situation involving a chemical weapon of mass destruction. The authority to make such a request may be exercised by another official of the Department of Justice in accordance with section 382(f)(2) of title 10.
This section of the USA-PATRIOT Act removed the word “chemical” in line 5.
I guess they omitted "chemical" so that they could take into account biological as well as nuclear weapons.
Sec. 105
Expands National Electronic Crime Task Force Initiative “for the purpose of preventing, detecting, and investigating various forms of electronic crimes, including potential terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure and financial payment systems.”
Sec. 106
Amends 50 U.S.C. 1702, the International Emergency Powers Act, to allow the president to investigate, regulate, or prohibit any foreign exchanges; or transfers of payments through banking institutions; or importing or exporting currency or securities “by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” This last sentence is what was added to 50 U.S.C. 1702.
This part is interesting. Before, the president could prohibit a lot of things in a general sense. Now, the language of 50 U.S.C. 1702 has changed, specifying that it applies only to things within the jurisdiction of the United States.
And this is the end of Title I. Pretty prosaic stuff. Turns out most of the USA PATRIOT Act is pretty banal stuff. A lot of it is just updating legislation like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to come up to speed with current technology. For example, the law before the USA PATRIOT Act really didn't allow the government to wiretap computer networks, since such networks weren't around when FISA was written. Now, the government can wiretap computer networks. Penn & Teller, in their show, were right: about 95% of the USA PATRIOT Act isn't very sexy: increase funding there, change that definition there.
Look for Title II, coming soon!
Comments
today is thursday and that means it's my birthday BIATCH yeah 18 sucka
Posted by: Bud-dy | August 31, 2005 10:33 PM
Mark, could Penn and Teller be pushing you to the libertarian side? You had been sounding pretty left of center until the mention of Bullshit.
Have you seen the one on gun control yet? Also, happy birthdy to bud-dy.
Posted by: Ned Weinberger | September 1, 2005 6:52 AM
this had better get more interesting. you should add another color of text where you just make crap up to keep the lame laypersons like me interested.
Posted by: matt | September 1, 2005 2:52 PM
Ned, I've always had some beliefs similar to the libertarians. Drug war? Who needs it! Regulations on sex between consenting adults? Preposterous! On the other hand, while I don't believe in outlawing guns, I do believe in regulating them. They're a fairly deadly weapon, and as such, should require licenses. I don't pay much heed to the Australians or British, who had their guns taken away after they required licenses. Why? Because their constitutions had no right to own guns in it, unlike ours.
Most of the stuff Penn and Teller talk about is debunking hoaxes, in the true Houdini tradition. Houdini was distraught after the death of his mother, and went from medium to medium hoping that one of them could contact her. He eventually realized that mediums were just tricksters; he could even figure out the tricks they used because he used the same tricks in his own performances! He switched sides from believer to skeptic and spent a good portion of the rest of his life devoting himself to debunking fake spiritualists. In fact, he even put out an advertisement stating that he would give some amount of money to the first person who could definitively prove the existence of contact with the dead. Nobody won it.
(As a curious side-note, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of the ultra-skeptic character Sherlock Holmes, was himself a great believer in the paranormal. He trumpeted the cause of the two girls who allegedly had photographs of fairies which, as one of the girls -- then aged 90 or so -- revealed several years ago, were a hoax.)
Penn and Teller do this for the modern era: they debunk diet programs, alternative medicine, self-help programs, 12-step programs, and other kinds of things that they believe are misleading the public and preying upon understandable human fears. Their very first show, again, in the Houdini tradition, was a debunking of "psychics" like John Edward, who uses very old "cold reading" techniques in a new way.
Every now and then they'll come across a political issue, and I would even go so far as to say that half of the shows are political, while the other half are debunking "hoax" methods like Feng Shui or stupid advice given to new parents.
And, of course, I disagree with them. Recycling a bad thing? I don't think so. Maybe plastics aren't very recyclable, but aluminum (or any metal), glass, paper -- these are all very recyclable. Secondhand smoke not deadly? My own grandmother, who never smoked a day in her life, died of lung cancer. Could it be because she worked around smokers for thirty years? Their "experts" on how secondhand smoking wasn't a threat consisted of one doctor and two non-doctors: one was Larry Elder, libertarian radio show host on KABC Los Angeles, and someone from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. The only person they mustered to support secondhand smoke being bad was a guy who wasn't a doctor, just the head of an anti-smoking group.
And then there's the episode where they talk about free speech restrictions on college campuses and bring in David Horowitz as an "expert." The man is so looney tunes, he should have to wear a Bugs Bunny costume every day! And he's an "expert"?!
Posted by: Mark | September 1, 2005 3:16 PM
thanks ned for wishing me a happy birthday.
Posted by: Bud-dy | September 2, 2005 12:36 PM