Headlines, Human Rights, North America

RIGHTS-U.S.: Congress to Boost FBI Powers for ‘War on Terror’

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 2003 (IPS) - The U.S. Congress is poised to approve new powers that would let the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search and seize business records without court approval in the name of the administration’s "war on terror".

The legislation amounts to the first substantive expansion of the controversial USA Patriot Act since it was approved just after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Acting at the behest of the administration of President George W. Bush, a joint House-Senate conference committee has approved a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill permitting the FBI to demand records from certain businesses without the approval of a judge or grand jury if it deems them relevant to a counter-terrorism probe.

Until now, only banks, credit unions and similar financial institutions were obliged to turn over such records on demand.

Shortly after the conference agreement was reached, the House of Representatives approved the underlying authorisation bill by a margin of 263 to 163. It is expected to pass the Senate shortly.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was "disappointed" with the House’s approval but happy that a number of lawmakers on both left and right decided to oppose the bill to protest the records provision, whose inclusion in the bill was discovered by staff aides only last week.

Particularly notable in Thursday’s House vote was the defection by 15 right-wing Republicans from the administration’s fold.

"This Patriot Act expansion was the only controversial part of this legislation, and it prompted more than a third of the House, including 15 conservative Republicans, to change what is normally a cakewalk vote into something truly contested," said ACLU Legislative Counsel Timothy Edgar.

"One need look no further than this vote to get an effective gauge of the Patriot Act’s lack of popularity on Capitol Hill and among the American people," he said.

The Patriot Act gives unprecedented powers to the FBI and the entire federal government.

It was rammed through Congress by the administration just six weeks after the 9/11 attacks, and has evoked great controversy. An unusual coalition of liberal, left and right-wing groups has argued that the law’s expansion of the government’s surveillance and investigatory powers threatens individual freedoms and privacy rights.

More than 200 local governments and jurisdictions, including some of the country’s largest cities and the states of Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont, have since approved resolutions upholding their citizens’ rights to full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed in the constitution and urging a narrowing of the Patriot Act.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding a series of critical hearings in the past month on the act’s impact.

Members of the judiciary committee, including Republican Larry Craig of Idaho and five Democratic senators, sent a letter to the conference committee earlier this week urging it to strip the new provision from the intelligence bill so that it could be taken up by their committee in public hearings. The provision has never been publicly debated.

"I’m concerned about this," Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, who tried unsuccessfully to limit the life of the new provision, told the ‘New York Times’. "The idea of expanding the powers of government gives everyone pause except the Republican leadership."

The measure would extend the FBI’s power to seize records from banks and credit unions to securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that, in the government’s eyes, has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters".

Such seizures can be carried out with the approval of the judicial branch of government.

The administration wants the powers in order to more effectively prosecute the "war on terrorism", although critics warn that once granted, the FBI might use the powers in cases irrelevant to terrorism in order to gather evidence against targets of other investigations.

Indeed, the recent Senate hearings have discussed incidents in which information about individuals was obtained by the FBI through the use of its counter-terrorism powers although the probes were directed against what the ACLU called "garden-variety criminals".

The provision not only permits the FBI to seize records from more kinds of businesses; it also forbids businesses from informing their clients about the seizures.

In that way, it is comparable to a particularly controversial section of the Patriot Act that permits the FBI to seek an order for library records for an "investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities", and prohibits librarians from telling anyone that the FBI demanded the records.

Librarians and civil-liberties groups have sued the government to have that section declared unconstitutional.

"The more checks and balances against government abuse are eroded, the greater that abuse," said the ACLU’s Edgar. "We’re going to regret these initiatives down the road."