Patriot II Analyses
David sent me two analyses of the new Patriot Act that grants the US Executive Branch eerily similar emergency powers as were granted the Office of the Chancellor in Germany to combat domestic terrorism following the Reichstag Fire.
Title V � Stripping Americans of All Their Rights as U.S. Citizens; Unfairly Targeting Immigrants Under the Pretext of Fighting Terrorism: Stripping even native-born Americans of all of the rights of United States citizenship if they provide support for �terrorism,� allowing them to be indefinitely imprisoned in their own country as undocumented aliens. (Section 501). This section would permit the government to punish certain criminal activity by stripping even native-born Americans of U.S. citizenship, thereby depriving them of any nationality at all and potentially relegating them forever to imprisonment as undocumented immigrants in their own country.
SECTION 501 (Expatriation of Terrorists) expands the Bush administration’s “enemy combatant” definition to all American citizens who “may” have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act. (Section 802 is the new definition of domestic terrorism, and the definition is “any action that endangers human life that is a violation of any Federal or State law.”) … Under Section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activities can be grabbed off the street and thrown into a van never to be seen again. The Justice Department states that they can do this because the person “had inferred from conduct” that they were not a US citizen … SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a criminal act for any member of the government or any citizen to release any information concerning the incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also states that law enforcement does not even have to tell the press who they have arrested and they never have to release the names.