patriot act
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On October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act (acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"). Passed hurriedly (many Congressmen stated later they had not even had time to read the law) it created a new crime, "domestic terrorism," so broadly defined that it could conceivably apply to acts of civil disobedience. The Patriot Act, along with Executive Orders issued after 9-11, threaten rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The USA PATRIOT Act gives the FBI and the CIA greater rights to wiretap phones, monitor e-mail, survey medical, financial and student records, and break into homes and offices without prior notification. It creates a new crime of domestic terrorism that is so broadly defined that it may be applied to citizens acting legally to express their own disagreement. Attorney General John Ashcroft defends this surveillance. Before he took that job, as a senator during the Clinton Administration, he wrote that such surveillance violated the 4th Amendment right to privacy. Under this Act and other legislation, non-citizens are being deported or detained indefinitely without judicial appeal...