Now I'm all for doing whatever we need to do to catch terrorist before they can do harm but if this next article is true I don't think the patriot act should be used in this manner.Hog I know this probably not why you posted this thread but I thought I'd post it here anyway...LOL
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=57177§ion=NATION_WORLD&subsection=NATION&year=2003&month=9&day=16
Monday, September 15, 2003
Common criminals facing Patriot Act
The anti-terrorism laws are being used against smugglers, drug dealers and run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
By DAVID B. CARUSO
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.
The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged con artists and drug dealers.
A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months.
Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
Civil liberties and legal defense groups say the government soon will routinely use anti-terrorism laws against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.
The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, erased many restrictions that had barred the government from spying on its citizens, granting agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic and computer eavesdropping and access private financial data.
Stefan Cassella of the Justice Department's asset forfeiture and money laundering section, said lawmakers knew the Patriot Act contained provisions that had been on prosecutors' wish lists for years and would be used in a wide variety of cases.
In one case this year, investigators used a provision in the law to recover $4.5 million from telemarketers accused of tricking elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the Canadian lottery. Prosecutors said the defendants told victims they would receive their prize as soon as they paid thousands of dollars in income tax on their winnings.
Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would have had to use international treaties and appeal for help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash, deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they simply seized it from assets held by those banks in the United States.
"These are appropriate uses of the statute," Cassella said. "If we can use the statute to get money back for victims, we are going to do it."
