The United States Department of Justice Department constructed an addition to the Patriot Act that would drastically increase the Federal government’s powers in dealing with matters of national security.
The bill, titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, was written by the staff of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and kept secret until an anonymous insider leaked a copy to a non-partisan civil rights watchdog group in Washington, DC, on Jan. 9. It has since received little coverage by mass media outlets.
Word spread throughout the nation’s capital of the bill, nicknamed the “Patriot Act II,” and the full text of the 86-page leaked document was posted on the Center’s web site.
The loss of constitutional rights raised concerns among civil rights groups over the first Patriot act, but the Domestic Security Enhancement Act would create more.
“Everything that folks might be concerned about with the Patriot Act, this is times five or times ten when I look at it,” said Chuck Lewis, Executive Director of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity in an interview on PBS with Bill Moyers. “I see it as very serious.”
Under the new act, suspects can be secretly arrested and detained for an unlimited amount of time, their citizenship taken away, and brought to a top secret location overseas where laws against torture do not. Divulging information about detainees will also become a crime.
“In terms of information about detainees, not only can [the government] detain anyone they’d like to detain, there is no public information about it,” said Lewis.
The Federal government would be able to take control of any aspect of an investigation, including placing gag orders on judges and grand juries.
“They reduce judicial oversight with the secret intelligence courts,” said Lewis. “Instead of saying the court may do this, now it’s the court will do this.”
The bill includes sections that give powers to the executive branch of the government that have never before been granted in the government’s history.
For example, top Federal officials may now keep all their financial activities secret, and investigating them will be considered terrorism under the new act.
The Federal government will be able use martial law powers domestically and internationally without Congress declaring a state of war.
Companies dealing with highly toxic materials will no longer have to release information to the public about the threat a facility poses to the surrounding environment for fear that terrorists could use the information to pick a site for an attack.
“This proposed legislation is by no means a done deal,” reported Beverly Lumpkin from Washington on Feb. 21, covering the Department of Homeland Security for ABC News.Com, “even though a Republican administration pushing it through a Republican Congress with a war looming may sound like the best possible atmosphere.”
The new bill also excludes any “sunset clause” that would render it void after five years as the first one did. It is intended as a permanent change in the Federal government’s application of the bill of rights.
Neither of the Patriot Acts includes a comprehensive definition of what constitutes “terrorism,” nor any section stating that the methods of investigation now allowed are limited to matters of national security.