{"id":388,"date":"2003-12-29T00:34:32","date_gmt":"2003-12-29T05:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/12\/patriot_act_expansion\/"},"modified":"2003-12-29T00:34:32","modified_gmt":"2003-12-29T05:34:32","slug":"patriot_act_expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/12\/patriot_act_expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriot Act Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I missed this story earlier, but before Christmas President Bush signed a Patriot-like act<\/a> which enlarged the FBI’s power to dig through financial records. The act expands the definition of a covered “financial institution” to include “stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business ‘whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.'”
\nWorse yet:<\/p>\n

While broadening the definition of “financial institution,” the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a “National Security Letter.” To get the records, the FBI doesn’t have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate “probable cause” – reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties. And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to report to Congress how often they have used the National Security Letters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, notice how Bush operates. He signed the bill on the Saturday that Saddam Hussein was captured:<\/p>\n

A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing – on a Saturday – as “the President signs bills seven days a week.” But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago – on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
\nBy signing the bill on the day of Hussein’s capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don’t suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sneaky, huh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I missed this story earlier, but before Christmas President Bush signed a Patriot-like act which enlarged the FBI’s power to dig through financial records. The act expands the definition of a covered “financial institution” to include “stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}