User:Ta bu shi da yu/Analysis of Wikipedia's PATRIOT Act article

On October 18, 2004 Orin S. Kerr wrote a blog entry about our article, USA PATRIOT Act. He crticised it for several reasons, mostly over completely inaccurate details about the article. I decided I'd find out who wrote them.

Quote 1

This law provides for indefinite imprisonment without trial of non-U.S. citizens whom the Attorney General has determined to be a threat to national security. (At least two U.S. citizens, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, have also been designated "enemy combatants" and imprisoned without trial). The government is not required to provide detainees with counsel, nor is it required to make any announcement or statement regarding the arrest. The law allows a wiretap to be issued against an individual instead of a specific telephone number. It permits law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant and search a residence without immediately informing the occupants, if the Attorney General has determined this to be an issue of national security. (For example, State University of New York - Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz was indicted based on evidence seized during a search for bioterrorism-related materials conducted under the provisions of the PATRIOT Act. Artist Ensared by PATRIOT Act (PDF) (http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/images/AiAfrontpage09_04.pdf). The act also allows intelligence gathering at religious events. With a few exceptions, provisions of the act are due to expire on December 31, 2005.

The main objection here was that "there is very little in this description that is factually true. The Patriot Act does not provide for indefinite imprisonment of anyone; the detentions of Hamdi and Padilla had nothing to do with the Patriot Act; the Patriot Act has nothing to do with detention without counsel; the Act does not allow intelligence gathering at religious events; the act does not allow surreptitious warrants to be obtained on the Attorney General's approval; and very few of the provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire in 2005."

When I looked at the edit history, I found the following diff by User:Pizza Puzzle, which directs to User:Lir, who was banned for a year by the ArbCom and who has since been constantly sniping away at Wikipedia from such sites as The Wikipedia Review, and Lir's own site.

Later on, I noticed the following diff, by the same editor. It removed the text:

While there are at least two American citizens being held by the military without charge or trial, this is NOT authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act. Please see: USA PATRIOT Act, as it applies to citizens and non-citizens. The USA PATRIOT Act is not the reason why the alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen, is being held without trial. The USA PATRIOT Act does not make his detention legal. He is being held as an "enemy combatant" by the President of the United States. The Attorney General argues that the President, as commander-in-chief, has the right to detain a U.S. citizen without trial or charge if that person is an "enemy combatant," based on a World War II-era Supreme Court decision. This is a highly controversial action, and will ultimately be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

with

The USA PATRIOT Act is not why Padillais being held; he is held as an enemy combatant; a term from the World War II-era.

Later on, User:Alberuni added the folowing:

This law provides for indefinite imprisonment without trial of non-U.S. citizens whom the Attorney General has determined to be a threat to national security. (At least two U.S. citizens have also been held as "enemy combatants", Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla) The government is not required to provide detainees with counsel, nor is it required to make any announcement or statement regarding the arrest. The law allows a wiretap to be issued against an individual instead of a specific telephone number. It permits law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant and search a residence without immediately informing the occupants, if the Attorney General has determined this to be an issue of national security. The act also allows intelligence gathering at religious events. With a few exceptions, provisions of the act are due to expire on December 31, 2005.

This was removed soon after Kerr wrote is blog by anonymous editor.

Second comment

On October 18, 2004 Kerr again wrote about the article. It was still as bad as ever.

Quote 2

Enacted by the U.S. Congress after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, the act enhances the authority of U.S. law enforcement for the purported intention of investigating and preempting potential terrorism. Because the USA PATRIOT Act is a revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), this enhanced legal authority is also used to detect and prosecute other alleged potential crimes. Expanding on FISA, the USA Act defines terrorism as an activity that meets all of the following three criteria:

1. It intimidates or coerces the government or civil population 2. It breaks criminal laws 3. It endangers human life.

This definition is adopted in the USA PATRIOT Act. Critics claim the Act is unnecessary and enables U.S. law enforcement to infringe upon free-speech, freedom of the press, human rights, and right to privacy. It is most controversial among critics for its section 216, which allows judges to grant government investigators ex parte orders to look into personal phone and internet records on the basis of being "relevant for an on going investigation", rather than probable cause as outlined in the fourth amendment.

At the time, Kerr stated that:

Almost every sentence in this description is inaccurate or doesn't make sense. Some of the sentences have only minor errors, but others are way off. To pick just a few examples, the Patriot Act is not a revision of FISA; it contains revisions of FISA, to be sure, but the FISA revisions are only about 5 percent of the act. Second, the definion of "domestic terrorism" (not just "terrorism") in the Patriot Act is not an important part of the Patriot Act, as I explained in depth in a post you can access here. Third, I haven't heard criticism of Section 216 of the Patriot Act in years. It used to be controversial because early critics simply misunderstood what it did, but as I detailed in this law review article, Section 216 was actually pretty friendly to civil liberties concerns. And keep in mind, this is just the overview.

I agree. This information has now been updated again, and we have the current article.

The only way forward, in my view, is to document each of the titles, and move backwards. Once each of the titles of the Patriot Act are documented, then we can start editing that article.

Ta bu shi da yu 05:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)