Justice Department Responds
to Congressional Concerns over Patriot Act
Correspondence to Congress released October 16 indicates that while the Justice Department has made relatively limited use of powers granted under the USA Patriot Act, the law has “provided critical assistance to the efforts of the department and the administration against terrorists and spies in the U.S.”
In four letters to the House Judiciary Committee totaling 61 pages, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bryant said intelligence information obtained from criminal grand juries has been shared with other agencies on 40 occasions in 38 jurisdictions nationwide. The Washington Post noted October 18 that 40 was a smaller number of cases than critics had predicted.
The letters were sent between July 26 and October 17 in response to requests by Reps. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft respond to 50 questions about the act’s implementation. In a statement, Sensenbrenner said he was “satisfied that the Department of Justice has produced answers that are sufficient for the committee’s oversight and legislative efforts.” However, the letters failed to indicate whether the FBI has used the Patriot Act “to obtain records from a public library, bookstore, or newspaper,” one of the concerns voiced by the Judiciary Committee.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that the government is hiding important information on the use of the Patriot Act from the public, including how frequently the FBI has ordered libraries, bookstores, and newspapers to divulge records. Earlier in the week the ACLU launched a national advertising and lobbying campaign to challenge antiterrorism policies that the group maintains have curtailed freedoms.
Posted October 21, 2002.
|
