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Justice Department Report on Use of Patriot Act

From the House Judiciary Committee website:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) Tuesday released the answers received last week from the Justice Department regarding the USA PATRIOT Act and the war on terrorism. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Rep. Conyers wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft on April 1, 2003 (accessible here) requesting information on these issues.

Among the findings:

~ The Department has used the new powers of the PATRIOT Act for non-terrorism cases (drug violations, credit card fraud, theft from a bank account, a lawyer who defrauded his clients).

~The Department has sought and the courts have authorized delayed notification of search warrants 47 times. Some courts have authorized delayed notification lasting until the indictment was unsealed. The Department has sought extensions of such delayed notifications 248 times.

~The Attorney General made emergency authorizations 113 times for FISA electronic surveillance and/or physical searches in a one-year period.

~Prior to moving to DHS, the INS did not charge any aliens with the expanded terrorism grounds of inadmissibility or deportability provided under section 411 of the PATRIOT Act.

On monitoring of attorney-client communications, Justice says:

~The Attorney General has ordered the monitoring of attorney communications for a single inmate: Sheik Omar Ahmad Rahman, who was convicted for his part in the 1993 plot to bomb the World Trade Center. Rahman and his attorney were notified that their communications were subject to monitoring. No monitoring has occurred, however, because the inmate and his attorneys thus far have chose not to communicate further with each other.

You can read the full 62 page report here. The New York Times' has this on the report.

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