Congress must stop administration's abuses (Romero Exec Director of ACLU)

[maddezmom]

March 19, 2007
BY ANTHONY D. ROMERO
Time and again the Bush administration pledges to follow the law. Time and again it does not. The revelations about the FBI's flagrantly illegal use of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information is the latest example of the administration illegally running roughshod over the personal privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Violations of the USA Patriot Act show that the act and actions of the government are anything but patriotic.
This is an administration that cannot be trusted to oversee and control itself, and it is long past time for Congress to investigate these flagrant abuses and repeal parts of the act that lend themselves to abuse and civil liberties violations.

The act's abuses stem from provisions in that law that allow the government to seek personal information in the United States in order to carry out investigations to protect against international terrorism or espionage. The information is sought via the controversial, so-called National Security Letters -- the government term for subpoenas that require no prior review by a judge. The act lowered the legal threshold for obtaining an NSL, and what few protections were placed in the law to safeguard civil liberties were being illegally ignored, according to the Justice Department's own inspector general.

What emerges from the Office of the Inspector General's report on NSLs is a clear pattern of abuse. Whenever an inch is given, the government takes the proverbial mile. The number of NSLs has grown dramatically, from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, and the report is replete with examples of misuses and abuses of the privacy rights of Americans.

more:http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/302725,CST-EDT-REF19.article