How the Patriot Act could get you up to 15 years in Jail

[Modbert]

In This Article, I Show How Easy It Is For Peaceful People to Violate the Patriot Act and Face 15 Years in Jail | World | AlterNet

July 10, 2010 |
Last month, the Supreme Court exposed Americans to jail sentences of up to 15 years just for giving advice to groups the U.S. government considers untouchable. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that the USA Patriot Act's expanded definition of “material support” for “foreign terrorist organizations” passes Constitutional muster. The broad wording of the statute not only makes it a crime to support violent activities, but also prohibits Americans from offering "services" or "training, expert advice or assistance" to any entity designated as a terrorist group.

but it was only with the rushed passage of the Patriot Act just weeks following the 9/11 attacks that “expert advice or assistance” was added to the definition of “material support.”

In criminalizing non-violent speech, the ruling is anathema to our system of constitutional government. In this article I’ll demonstrate just how easy it is to violate the Patriot Act by giving some peaceful advice to a few of the 45 groups the State Department has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

The Supreme Court has ruled that if I leave it at that -- expressing my own views without being in contact with any group designated as a terrorist organization -- I’m fine. But if I send this column to an official of Hezbollah or FARC -- if I communicate with them directly -- I’ll be committing a serious crime.

However, in places like Gaza, where Hamas controls a lot of ground, it’s virtually impossible to deliver humanitarian relief without talking to members of a “terrorist” organization.

Sometimes, however, history proves those people were on the “right” side. Perhaps the most obvious example is the African National Congress (ANC), which the United States designated as a terrorist organization during the 1980s. If the Patriot Act had been in effect at the time, any U.S. citizen who communicated with the ANC while organizing opposition to South Africa’s racist system would have been eligible for a lengthy prison term. Now, it's the ruling party in today’s post-apartheid South Africa.

The ANC isn’t the only example. In the early 1990s, Robert Gelbard, Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, described the Kosovo Liberation Army as, "without any questions, a terrorist group." As journalist Michael Moran noted, by the end of the decade, “the United States had embraced the KLA's cause,” and, “after the war, the KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps, which now works alongside NATO forces patrolling the province.”

At the same time, some organizations that commit terrible crimes against civilians never make the list because their goals dovetail with our own. Sometimes we even support them. During the 1980s, the Nicaraguan contras were known to torture, rape and kill innocent civilians sympathetic to the Sandinistas, but Ronald Reagan praised the group as heroic “freedom fighters.”

Thoughts USMB?

 

[Oddball]

Toldja.

 

[Modbert]

Toldja.

Huh? I've always been against the Patriot Act.

 

[Charles_Main]

Yes clearly fucked up. Parts of the act are, parts are fine. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Just fix whats wrong with it.

 

[Oddball]

It's Rosemary's baby, dude.