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Legislation affects average citizens { December 21 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/liberty/story/7989769p-8926319c.htmlhttp://www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/liberty/story/7989769p-8926319c.html
Liberty in the balance: Patriot Act's broad brush
Aimed at terrorists, the landmark legislation affects average citizens.
By Sam Stanton and Emily Bazar -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Sunday, December 21, 2003
Becky Foster isn't a terrorist, but her bank didn't want to take any chances.
Before she could open a new account, bank officials told her, the USA Patriot Act required them to run her name through a government list of suspected terrorists.
The public corruption probe known as "G-sting" is aimed at strip-club owners, but that didn't stop the FBI from using the Patriot Act to secretly obtain reams of banking information for its investigation.
Originally sold to Congress as a means of fighting terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Patriot Act has been used in numerous criminal cases unrelated to terrorism probes, officials say.
In addition, some financial institutions have been citing it to explain why they're now asking for sensitive personal information from their customers.
Citizens looking to join college savings plans, for example, have been told they must provide extra information under the act.
And under its auspices, hotels and airlines have compiled personal information on customers and turned it over to the government.
Although the federal government defends its use of the law as appropriate and necessary, some elected officials and civil liberties advocates say the practices bear out their concerns that the scope of the law is too broad.
"It was never my intent to have the Patriot Act used as a kitchen sink for all of the law enforcement tool goodies that the FBI has been trying to get for the last decades," said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat who voted for the act in October 2001.
"It's a classic case of bureaucratic overreaching. It is Patriot Act creep."
The act became law six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., passing overwhelmingly out of the House and Senate after administration officials said it was necessary to ensure the nation's safety.
The primary focus of the law is to fight terrorists, and the name itself -- Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism -- helped propel it through Congress.
But it also contained specific language about money-laundering cases that gained virtually no notice at the time it was passed, and the Justice Department says there is every reason to use that language to further its investigations, even if the probes are not related to terrorism.
"If a tool that is legal and constitutionally valid is good enough to use against organized crime or drug dealers, it ought to be good enough to be used against terrorism," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. "Conversely, if it's good enough to be used against terrorists, it ought to be used against other kinds of criminals."
Corallo noted that the financial and money-laundering provisions of the act came at the request of Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee.
Sarbanes' office did not respond to a request for comment. But the senator has said in the past that tough new tools are needed to fight money laundering.
"We had nothing to do with those provisions," Corallo said. "They were not promulgated by the administration, particularly not by the Justice Department. We don't have any problem with them. We think they're fine and useful."
Berkley, who represents the Las Vegas area in Congress, has learned in recent weeks that her district is a prime example of the Justice Department's efforts to use the law in investigations outside of terrorism probes.
Last month, controversy erupted in Nevada when the FBI acknowledged it had used a portion of the act for the first time in a public corruption case.
The probe is known in Las Vegas as "G-sting" and seeks evidence of ties between a Las Vegas strip club operator and local politicians. As part of the investigation, the FBI used a section of the law that allows investigators to seek detailed financial information about suspects. Justice Department officials say such a move is a prudent means of getting information it needs quickly.
But opponents of the law say the tactic validates the concerns they have voiced about the potential for the government to abuse the powers it received under the law, which allows for secret searches and information-gathering.
"It has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, which is why it's so troubling," said Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union.
"The Patriot Act was sold to the American people and sold to the Congress as a tool to fight terrorism. We were told by the attorney general in the days and weeks after the horrifying events of 9/11 that it was an absolutely necessary tool in the war against terrorism, and that anyone who opposed its passage was unpatriotic and giving aid and comfort to America's enemies."
The ACLU voiced concerns at the time of the act's passage that it could be used to enhance the FBI's powers to investigate citizens in nonterrorism cases, and officials contend its recent use in Nevada underscores that point.
Kevin Bankston, a fellow with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which lobbies to protect computer users' rights and privacy, said the Patriot Act allows financial institutions to cooperate with the federal government in a wide array of investigations, including money laundering.
"Money laundering is very, very broad," he said. "There is no probable cause here. There is no judicial oversight. Yet the government can immediately query financial institutions across the nation to find out where you have an account or who you've done business with.
"It's not just if you have an account there, but any record of a financial transaction."
Bankston said the definition of "financial institution" in the act is very broad, and can include pawn brokers, real estate sales companies and others.
Federal officials acknowledge that the law greatly expanded the government's ability to seek financial records from a variety of businesses.
"Traditionally, we had a core group of financial institutions," said Judith R. Starr, chief counsel of the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. "The statute goes out much further than it has gone yet. It goes out to travel agents, vehicle sellers, pawn brokers. It's a broad statute."
Starr said critics who say the Patriot Act shouldn't be used for money laundering are missing the larger picture of how many different types of crime can help finance terrorist activities.
"We want to make sure we're combatting crime as well as terrorism, particularly because the two feed each other," she said.
Under Section 314a of the Patriot Act, law enforcement agencies can go to FinCEN and ask it to identify all the financial institutions that a suspect has a relationship with.
"We came up with a system that was supposed to be a pointer system or locator system ... in terrorist cases or significant money-laundering cases, where you didn't have a financial trail," she said. "You ought to be able to get one in real time on a nationwide basis. It was one of those things, after Sept. 11, where you hit yourself on the head and say, 'Why don't you have this?' "
Under the system, names of suspects are sent to financial institutions, which report back on whether they match anyone doing business with them.
The center does not provide financial documents to law enforcement, however, and the Justice Department notes that kind of information can be obtained only with a subpoena.
FinCEN data show that most of the 314a requests to which the agency responded didn't relate to terrorism, but to money laundering. The government has used the provision in 167 instances between February and October of this year, with 60 involving terrorism cases and 107 money laundering, according to figures compiled by federal officials.
But Starr warned that some of the money-laundering cases might turn out to be terrorism-related in the end.
"Sometimes it's going to take a while to find out," she said. "I went back and looked at some of the money-laundering cases. I can tell you that they resemble cases that turned out to be terrorist-financing cases."
In the winter and spring, the network proposed including travel agencies, vehicle sellers and people involved in real estate settlements as financial institutions, a proposal Starr said still is being reviewed.
As criticism of the Patriot Act has gained momentum nationally over the past year, the federal government and Attorney General John Ashcroft have said repeatedly that ordinary Americans have nothing to fear from the law.
But law-abiding Americans have been affected, since some banks and other businesses tell customers that the act requires them to collect personal information on the government's behalf, for things like opening a bank account.
Becky Foster counts herself among those. A court clerk who lives in a gated community on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Foster is president of her homeowners association.
When the association recently changed banks and tried to open a new account, board members received notice from the bank that under the Patriot Act, the "law requires banks to check all signers on all accounts to determine if there are any terrorist links."
"In order to comply, we are required to obtain Social Security numbers, driver license numbers and date of birth from each signer, to check them against the government's terrorist list," the Community Association Banc wrote.
"When they sent us the letter, we just all kind of looked at each other," Foster said last week, standing outside her split-level suburban home near Nellis Air Force Base. "We didn't take a vote on it, we just said we're not going to do it.
"This is another example of how far the tentacles reach into private people's lives. I had no idea it was going to affect us on a level like this, at a homeowners association. It's silly, I think."
The case had little real impact on the homeowners. They simply ignored the bank's request, began writing checks on their account and never heard anything about the matter again.
But furor over the case has increased attention in Nevada about the Patriot Act, and spawned rallies in Las Vegas and Reno.
The outcry there adds to the criticism law enforcement already faces over its undercover infiltration of peace and advocacy groups, and its demands for access to records of nonprofit groups that aid immigrants.
Hotels and airlines also have been affected by the law and related new federal policies, with some struggling to figure out what they are required to report.
Representatives from the travel and other industries gathered in Washington, D.C., in March to discuss these challenges for a conference sponsored by a group called Privacy & American Business.
Among the speakers was Chris Zoladz, vice president for information protection at Marriott International, who described changes the corporation has been navigating in the wake of new federal policies.
His comments were included on an audio tape from the conference obtained by The Bee. Marriott officials declined to discuss his comments when contacted for this story.
"Things in general for Marriott have changed very significantly" since the Sept. 11 attacks, Zoladz told those attending the session.
"The Patriot Act, in addition to the many provisions that it contains, basically turned Marriott into a financial institution," he said. "We are now considered a money service business because we cash checks and we do currency exchange."
As a result, he said, Marriott now reports "suspicious" transactions to the government.
But the definition of "what suspicious is isn't so terribly clear," he told the conference.
Zoladz also complained that the company still has difficulty understanding how to follow all aspects of the Patriot Act and related federal policy changes.
"Someone walks in off the street, goes to the lounge and orders a cocktail," he told the conference. "Are we supposed to ask them who they are and then go to Treasury's Web site and do a name search and see what happens?"
Ordinary citizens also are perplexed by facets of the law, civil libertarians say, noting that people across the country have complained about banks asking them to provide personal details to open accounts.
"One problem that we tried to point out when the Patriot Act was first being considered was that many of the powers of the Patriot Act were not limited to terrorism in any way," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel in Washington, D.C. "Although it was sold as a bill to go after al-Qaida and other terrorists, it was really making changes that would broadly affect Americans' privacy."
The Justice Department says that simply is not true.
"The fact is that when you're talking about the provisions of the Patriot Act, they are governed on a case-by-case basis by federal judges," Corallo said. "We can't get authority to do surveillance, to do searches or to get records without the authority of a federal judge.
"We then have to report to Congress twice a year on all of our activities on the Patriot Act. That does not exist anywhere else in our law."
But concern over the amount of information the government can access under the law has spawned moves in hundreds of communities in the United States, including Sacramento, to pass resolutions opposing the act.
That concern extends to Congress, where Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., and a dozen other members have called for hearings next year on whether the Justice Department is misusing the law.
"Critics representing a wide range of ideological perspectives have raised serious questions about how the Justice Department has used its legal tools, including the Patriot Act, to investigate individuals with no apparent link to terrorism," Meehan said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, citing the Las Vegas strip-club case as an example.
In Las Vegas, Berkley's office hears almost daily from constituents angry about the issue.
"My constituents are up in arms," she said. "Las Vegas has always had a tenuous relationship with the FBI.
"People who move here are kind of independent-thinking people, and they want to be left alone. They don't believe in government interference with their lives."
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