The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate: Letter to my congresspeople about the USA-PATRIOT Act

July 08, 2003

Letter to my congresspeople about the USA-PATRIOT Act

I wanted to post an entry about my first (silly) personal encounter with the "USA-PATRIOT Act", when conveniently the ACLU wrote to ask me to write my congresspeople a letter about it. I dumped most of their suggested form letter, and ended up going for the throat in a pretty surly letter. (I actually meant to dump all of it, but just noticed that I left the first pre-written sentences in.)

My congresspeople are Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, government-loving sellouts, and Representative John Doolittle, a meddling conservative Republican who voted for the proposed anti-flag burning amendment (maybe someday I'll show you the letter I wrote to him on that one). I don't expect any of them to lift a finger to do anything about the USA-PATRIOT Act anytime soon. Feinstein and Boxer both voted for it, and Doolittle probably wishes he was in office then so he could have.

So my letter is pretty cynical and harsh. I think there's a slight chance that John Doolittle actually reads his e-mails, and with luck he'll click on either of those links and wake up just a smidgen. The subject line of my letter was "Wasting my time, surely".

Here it is:

As your constituent, I urge you to support corrections to the USA PATRIOT
Act, investigative guidelines and other government actions that threaten
civil liberties. Congress must act to ensure government powers are in line
with the guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

I don't expect for a minute that you will take any sort of action to
reform or repeal the USA-PATRIOT Act, but I would be negligent if I didn't
at least try.

Many provisions in the USA-PATRIOT Act are blatantly in violation of the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If you took the time to read it, you
would see that yourself.

I've finally been impacted by the "Patriot Act" in my own life, in a silly
and obstructive way. I have an account with a service called c2it -- it's
a paypal-like service run by Citibank. I made one small transaction
through their service over a year ago, and haven't used it since. I've
decided I don't trust them with my private info (they have my SS#, my
mother's maiden name, my birthdate, address, bank account numbers, etc.),
and yesterday I tried to get them to purge my information from their
records. They refused, and cited the USA-PATRIOT Act as one of their
justifications for keeping that info. The guy conceded that I was clearly
not using the account for money laundering or terrorism, but he didn't
care. So now a company whose practices I don't trust has some of my most
private personal info.

You might also want to read this article "Patriot Raid":
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15770
It's a first-person account of a raid that was conducted on a restaurant
in NYC, and it's quite revealing. The raid produced no fruit in terms of
law enforcement, but it did threaten and violate the many victims of it,
including restaurant workers and patrons.

While you're at it, read my article "The USA-PATRIOT Axe", where I
challenge supporters of the Act to face up to the reality of what they're
supporting. Here it is:
http://www.freedom2008.com/blog/archives/000294.html

Both articles are reasonably short, and provide interesting perspectives
you should keep in mind as you abandon your responsibility to the
Constitution and shy away from the necessary step of reversing the foul
"Patriot" Act.

This is the part where the ACLU form letter says "I look forward to
hearing your thoughts on the issue." I don't look forward to that,
however. I look forward to your press release announcing your vocal
opposition to the USA-PATRIOT Act and the DSEA, called Patriot II by most.
Patriot II is like most sequels -- it's lamer, with less substance than
the original.

Sincerely,

Lance Brown

I posted the ACLU's e-mail as an action item over at E-Actions for Freedom, so drop your own congressfolk a line if you're so inclined. You might want to be slightly less rash and spiteful than I. ;-)

Posted by Lance Brown at July 8, 2003 10:42 PM | TrackBack

Comments

I'm a US citizen living most of the time in the UK. I own a home in the US and have a bank account with that home address. Citibank's C2it service would actually be a huge help to me in managing my finances on both sides of the ocean, and I was willing to live with letting the big bank have my personal info.

I have just been told I cannot sign up for this service because I am on record as holding a Citibank credit card with an address outside the US. The folks at the bank couldn't have been nicer about it all really -- they just said their hands are tied since the Patriot Act came into force on June 8th.

They did say I could fulfill the Act's requirements if I would fax the following items to them: 1) a social security card, a driver's license showing my SSN, or a pay stub showing it; and 2) a utility bill or bank statement from within the last 30 days showing my address.

Well, my Tennessee driver's license has no SSN on it, my pay stubs come from the UK and so have no SSN on them, and if I ever owned an SS card it must have disappeared when I was a child. I do pay phone bills for my Tennessee home, but they come to my UK address. I receive bank statements at the US address -- but obtaining and transmitting one with the required 30-day freshness is not so easy from 4,000 miles away.

I'm just writing this to blow off steam. Lucky me, I can shrug off the effects of this legislation and the mania it represents. I live in a free country.

-Tom

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