- PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers Exposes Secret Draft Bill from
The Department of Justice to Extend Powers of The Patriot Act...
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- Tonight, on Friday, February 7 at 9 P.M. on PBS (check
local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html), NOW with Bill Moyers
will provide details of a Justice Department draft of a bill designed to
extend the powers of the Patriot Act. The draft bill was provided exclusively
to NOW by the Center for Public Integrity, [www.publicintegrity.org], which
obtained it from a confidential government source. The document, entitled
the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, outlines significant broadening
of law enforcement powers, including domestic intelligence gathering, surveillance,
and law enforcement prerogatives, while decreasing public access to information
and judicial review authority.
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- Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and
author of Terrorism and the Constitution assessed the document for NOW
with Bill Moyers and the Center for Public Integrity. "I think this
is a quite radical proposal. It authorizes secret arrests. It would give
the Attorney General essentially unchecked authority to deport anyone who
he thought was a danger to our economic interests. It would strip citizenship
from people for lawful political associations," he told NOW's Roberta
Baskin. "And...it has not been put on the table so there can be a
discussion about it."
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- NOW interviewed executive director of the Center for
Public Integrity, Charles Lewis, in New York on Thursday. When asked to
gauge the significance of the document Lewis responded: "It just deepens
and broadens, further extends the first Patriot Act," he says. "And
it's arguably...a more thorough rendering of all the things law enforcement
and intelligence agencies would like to have in a perfect world. I think
it's a very tough document when it comes to secrecy and surveillance."
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- Share your views on the issues and read more about the
secret document at http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html.
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- http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/02/07_DOJ.html
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