Still hope for the Fourth Amendment
While my hopes are not high, Congress is reviewing the merits of the Patriot Act. I found this bit interesting:
The data released by the Justice Department late Monday centered on its use of Section 213 of the law, which allows federal agents, with a court order, to enter a suspect’s home or residence secretly and search for evidence without immediately telling the person they have been there. The provision is among those set to expire at the end of 2005.
The new data showed that the Justice Department used the secret warrants 108 times from April 2003 to January 2005, for an average of almost five warrants per month. That represented a sharp increase from the last reported tally from October 2001 to April 2003, when 47 warrants were issued, for an average of fewer than three per month.
Justice Department officials said they resorted to using the secret warrants in less than 0.2 percent of all search warrants granted to law enforcement officials.
By my calculation (108/0.2%) the Justice Department conducted 54,000 warranted searches in 21 months? {Update: Keying error. Numbers updated and look a lot more reasonable}. Also:
The secret warrants were used in a wide spectrum of cases beyond terrorism, including child pornography, drug trafficking and organized crime, the officials said.
I thought the Patriot Act was to be used for terror? I mean, that’s why they pushed it.
April 5th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Ah, but they said less than… so the number could be upwards of a million warrants. Right, I don’t belive it either.
April 6th, 2005 at 6:48 am
The Patriot Act was just a collection of everything law enforcement had been wanting for a while (at least in terms of searches). It wasn’t formulated for terrorism, it was formulated to give government more control.
Welcome to the police state.