Parts of USA PATRIOT Act ruled unconstitutional

[Magnetic Poles]

A federal judge has stood up for the Constitution, by ruling parts of the Patriot Act violate the probable cause provisions of the Fourth Amendment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999950/

Good news for real patriots!

 

[moondg]

I hope this is good I do not know we will see.

 

[KenH]

 

[Joe]

Inho, it's very good. They have been trying to take away our freedom under the "guise" of terrorism for a long while now. The newspapers and media are promoting this propaganda, trying to scare us into handing the government our God given freedoms one by one.

 

[LeBuick]

Inho, it's very good. They have been trying to take away our freedom under the "guise" of terrorism for a long while now. The newspapers and media are promoting this propaganda, trying to scare us into handing the government our God given freedoms one by one.

What Joe said... :applause:

 

[carpro]

A federal judge has stood up for the Constitution, by ruling parts of the Patriot Act violate the probable cause provisions of the Fourth Amendment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999950/

Good news for real patriots!

Fingerprints at a crime scene are not "probable cause"?

 

[2 Timothy2:1-4]

This is not the ed of it to be sure.

 

[KenH]

But hopefully the end is getting closer.

 

[carpro]

Fingerprints at a crime scene are not "probable cause"?

Defense attorneys all over the country are licking their chops.:1_grouphug:

 

[Ivon Denosovich]

A federal judge has stood up for the Constitution, by ruling parts of the Patriot Act violate the probable cause provisions of the Fourth Amendment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999950/

Good news for real patriots!

I'm so happy I could !!!! Finally!!!

 

[Ivon Denosovich]

From browsing Reason:

The scandals [about the PATRIOT Act] began to percolate early in 2002, but none of them stuck; complaints about government snooping in library records and among antiwar groups may have gotten some buzz online and in local newspapers, but not in Congress. The first story that did was the revelation in late 2005 that the White House was approving phone wiretaps without getting warrants from the special courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The New York Times reported this in December 2005, just as the U.S. Senate was debating whether to eauthorize the PATRIOT Act and extend provisions that had been set to expire.

Civil liberties watchdogs, whose numbers had swelled since 2001, saw the revelations as a confirmation of their worst fears, and PATRIOT reauthorization became a tougher sell. According to Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), what really outraged senators wasn’t the scandal itself so much as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ refusal to meet with them to discuss the PATRIOT Act, the expiring provisions, and various related issues.

 

[Ivon Denosovich]

Ahem:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller spent much of March doing something neither man was used to doing: apologizing. On March 10, Mueller admitted that the agency hadn’t told the truth about its uses of PATRIOT Act powers to investigate Americans, admitting that nearly 50,000 privacy-busting “National Security Letters” had been sent in 2005 instead of the 30,000 Congress had been told of.

Can you say, "Mob Lynch?"

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119690.html

 

[Don]

Fingerprints at a crime scene are not "probable cause"?

No. You should be able to figure out why.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

I can't, Don. Help ?

 

[Ivon Denosovich]

From the ACLU:

Brandon Mayfield is a Portland, Oregon resident who is a convert to Islam and an attorney. Mayfield was wrongly accused by the government of involvement in the Madrid bombing as a result of evidence, including mistaken fingerprint identification, that fell apart after the FBI re-examined its case following its arrest and detention on Mayfield on a material witness warrant. Attorney General Gonzales acknowledged before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Section 218 of the Patriot Act was implicated in the secret search of Mayfield’s house. FBI admitted that it entered Mayfield’s house without a warrant based on criminal probable cause and copied four computer drives, digitally photographed sever documents, seized ten DNA samples and took approximately 335 digital photographs of Brandon Mayfield’s home.

Tariq Ramadan is regarded by many as Europe’s leading moderate Muslim intellectuals. Time Magazine named Ramadan among the Top 100 Innovators of the 21st Century. The government revoked Ramadan’s visa to teach at the University of Notre Dame under Section 411 of the Patriot Act, which permits the government to exclude non-citizens from the country if in the government’s view they have “used [their] position of prominence to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or to persuade others to support terrorist activity.” Consequently, an individual who discusses politics that a terrorist organization may adopt as its own viewpoints may be excluded from the United States, even if the individual does not support terrorist activity. As such, the government can essentially use this provision to deny admission to those whose political views it disfavors. There is no doubt that Ramadan uses his position of prominence to espouse his political beliefs. Notably, Ramadan, who denounces the use of violence in the name of Islam, had already been granted a visa after undergoing an extensive security clearance process and had previously been permitted to enter the country on numerous [times.]

Perhaps most troubling:

The extent of Patriot Act abuse is still unknown because of excessive secrecy enshrouding its use.

Also, from Cato:

Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes:

1)a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;

2)a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;

3)a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and

4)a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6330

 

[menageriekeeper]

I can help Bro. Curtis.

A fingerprint found in a public place is meaningless.

A fingerprint found on an object that had been in a public place is meaningless.

Even a fingerprint found on an explosive device has the potential to be meaningless unless there is other evidence connecting a suspect to the crime. Why? Because components must be: manufactured, packaged, sold or may have changed hand numerous times.

What the FBI should have done is looked to see if there was anything else that connected this guy to the crime except a print and the fact the man was Muslim. Then they should have double checked. Why? Because that is their job and prosecutions fall quite often on faulty evidence!

I too see this ruling as a positive change.

 

[2 Timothy2:1-4]

I can help Bro. Curtis.

A fingerprint found in a public place is meaningless.

A fingerprint found on an object that had been in a public place is meaningless.

Even a fingerprint found on an explosive device has the potential to be meaningless unless there is other evidence connecting a suspect to the crime. Why? Because components must be: manufactured, packaged, sold or may have changed hand numerous times.

What the FBI should have done is looked to see if there was anything else that connected this guy to the crime except a print and the fact the man was Muslim. Then they should have double checked. Why? Because that is their job and prosecutions fall quite often on faulty evidence!

I too see this ruling as a positive change.

This particular ruling makes no effective change. It will continue to be battled in the courts until it gets to the Supreme Court.

 

[carpro]

Quote:
Originally Posted by carpro
Fingerprints at a crime scene are not "probable cause"?

No. You should be able to figure out why.

Really ?

It's kinda tough when they are used as probable cause on a fairly routine basis to obtain search warrants.

These prints weren't the defendants. That's the problem. Making this knnd of sweeping ruling based on an admitted mistake by the government will never stand.

It turned out they did not have probable cause but believed they did at the time of the search. I believe this ruling will be applied only to this case and has no real effect on the Patriot Law.

 

[Don]

Don't know how else to say it. I haven't been able to find any other case where a fingerprint was used as probable cause.

Why stop there? I saw you at the scene, so I'm going to put you under surveillance. Or, I heard you were at the scene, so I'm going to put you under surveillance.

The Patriot Act is being misused.

 

[menageriekeeper]

It's kinda tough when they are used as probable cause on a fairly routine basis to obtain search warrants.

Capro, I don't think so. Prints may be enough to pull someone in for questioning, but it's not going to be enough by itself to obtain a search warrant for their home/car/office/phones plus funding to follow the owner of the fingerprint everywhere he goes on the mere possiblity that he might do something incriminating. Especially a print recovered from a public surface (see my above post).