While Janet Reno was Attorney General, the Justice Department's policy in considering Freedom of Information Act requests leaned towards disclosure. Attorney General John Ashcroft revised the policy In October 2001, imposing new restrictions on the information. He directed agencies "to carefully consider national security, effective law enforcement and personal privacy before releasing information."

Ashcroft also said the Justice Department would defend agencies' decisions not to release information if there was a ``sound legal basis'' for such withholding under FOIA. Under the Reno policy, Justice would defend an agency's withholding information only when the agency reasonably foresaw that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an FOIA exemption.

Turns out, Ashcroft's restrictions have had little effect on the amount of information released. A report released today by the General Accounting Office surveyed almost half of the FOIA officials at government agencies. Some findings:

Forty-eight percent of surveyed government officials who handle FOIA requests said they noticed no changes in what their agencies release to the general public since Ashcroft changed the Justice Department's FOIA memorandum. Only a third of the officials -- 31 percent -- said their agencies release less information to the public because of Ashcroft's 2001 directive, according to the General Accounting Office, Congress's watchdog arm. Of that 31 percent, only 8 percent saw more than a slight decrease, the GAO report said. [link via Behind the Homefront]

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People for the American Way have just released an in-depth report on the Administration's Attacks on Civil Liberties and on Civil Rights Protections since the first anniversary of Ashcroft assuming office. (They had already issued a report on his first year.)

The report is available for download here.

The report outlines the Ashcroft Justice Department’s dangerous tactics in the war on terrorism, its disturbing civil rights record, its participation in the administration’s judicial nomination strategies, and its attacks on the First Amendment, the role of career prosecutors and judicial independence. “The record is clear. Ashcroft and the Justice Department have gone too far. I’m heartened by the recent actions of members of Congress and the American people opposing Ashcroft’s assault on our freedoms,” Neas said. “Together, we’re sending a clear message to the attorney general that the Bill of Rights is not optional in wartime.”

bq.The report details the Justice Department’s conduct in the war on terrorism, from attacks on the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment to the Justice Department’s own inspector general’s account of civil rights abuses of prisoners rounded up after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Also covered are congressional efforts to check the DOJ’s power as well as resolutions passed by more than 150 American cities, towns and states speaking out against attacks on civil liberties.

Update: Cato v. DOJ, Round 2

It's official: The Justice Department is using the Patriot Act in criminal cases as well as terrorism investigation. Michelle Mittelstadt has a through report in the Dallas Morning News, available without subscription, here:

Though the government has not revealed most of the details of how it has applied the Patriot Act, the Justice Department told Congress in May that it is using the law in criminal cases, not just terrorism investigations.

Federal agents have used the new tools to seize a con man's assets; track down computer hackers and a fugitive; identify the hoaxster who made a school bomb threat, and monitor kidnappers' communications, the department advised the House Judiciary Committee.

In-house documents show that prosecutors are exploring other ways to use Patriot Act authorities in criminal investigations....In a May 2002 bulletin to the nation's 94 U.S. attorneys, a staffer in Justice's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section wrote enthusiastically about the Patriot Act's reach beyond terrorism cases. "Indeed, investigations of all manner of criminal conduct with a nexus to the Internet have benefited from these amendments," the trial attorney wrote.

Two bills have been introduced in Congress to try and take back some of the Patriot Act's new powers. The first, by Russ Feingold (D-WI), the lone senator to vote against the bill, would "limit records searches by requiring the FBI to show that the documents pertain to a suspected terrorist or spy."

The second bill, introduced by Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) has broad bipartisan support.

[It] would limit a number of Patriot Act authorities specifically to terrorism investigations, including the much-criticized "sneak-and-peek" searches. It also would increase judges' powers to scrutinize warrants and other authorities granted under the law, narrow the definition of domestic terrorism, and raise standards for records and wiretap requests.

Passage of these bills would help, but are not a cure-all.

"It's a good first start," said Denver attorney Jeralyn Merritt, treasurer of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "It places what I would call modest checks and balances on the most troublesome provisions."

On a related issue, don't miss law professor David Cole's analysis of Ashcroft's Patriot Act tour in the new issue of the Nation. And the Washington Post addresses the secrecy aspects of the use of the Patriot Act here.

Do not miss Georgetown Law Professor David Cole's new article in The Nation- On the Road With Ashcroft. Cole delivers the goods and explains why Ashcroft has chosen to limit his audiences to law enforcement groups and how he has fudged on the details and effect of the Patriot Act. Cole also explains why the public is becoming so concerned about the Administration's unprecedented grab for power and erosion of civil liberties. Here's a small sample, but go read the whole thing:

Public concern is not limited to the Patriot Act's four corners but arises from a whole range of measures this Administration has advanced, from secret detentions to ethnic profiling to "Total Information Awareness" and the "enemy combatant" designations. The Patriot Act has become shorthand for these excesses. Ashcroft's defense, however, ducks virtually all this criticism, focusing only on a handful of the act's provisions. He doesn't mention, for example, its most troubling sections, those affecting immigrants. They allow the government to exclude foreign nationals for their speech, to deport them on the basis of wholly innocent associations with any group Ashcroft blacklists and to lock them up on his say-so, without showing that they are dangerous or a flight risk (the only two constitutionally recognized justifications for preventive detention). Nor does he bother to defend a provision authorizing freezing of assets based on secret evidence. And his website makes only passing reference to the act's dramatic expansion of FISA power to authorize search warrants in criminal investigations without probable cause of criminal activity.

Just got word of this today --a conference for grass roots activists in October called Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights National Conference:

The September 11th tragedy became the pretext for the hastily passed USA PATRIOT Act and a series of federal executive orders, guidelines, and procedural changes, many of which undermine civil liberties without demonstrably enhancing national security. Such sweeping changes have evoked grave concerns among Americans across the political spectrum.

Soon after the Act was passed, individuals and small groups in a few U.S. cities who were concerned about threats to our freedoms began local grassroots organizing that launched a movement to channel apprehension and anger about rollbacks of civil liberties. Today, a nationwide, broad-based movement of local efforts to restore civil liberties guaranteed under the Constitution and Bill of Rights holds the promise of deepening community involvement in civil liberties.

A broad coalition of organizations (see list below) will convene a national organizing conference in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2003. The conference will assemble representatives of independent grassroots groups; coalitions involved in related legal and legislative action; Muslim, Arab, Hispanic, and other constituencies that have been disproportionately affected by the new laws, and others who want to join the growing movement.

The primary goal of the weekend conference is to advance the movement's impact on national policy... [See the site for more details.]

The appeals court in Nigeria today began hearing the second appeal of Amina Lawal who was sentenced to death by stoning for an extramarital sexual encounter. The penalty was imposed under the Islamic penal code of Sharia, imposed three years ago in the region. It is not clear whether the Nigerian government will intervene.

Amina Lawal has a few more avenues of appeal if this one fails. In this appeal, the Sharia law itself is not being challenged, only its application.

As the grounds for the appeal were read by her lawyer, she stared into space, while her child whimpered before finally falling asleep on her lap. Her uncle was the only family member to accompany her to the court.

....Twelve northern Nigerian states have introduced Sharia punishments for criminal cases in the last three years, and while five people have been sentenced to death by stoning, no sentence has yet been carried out.

From retired Drake University journalism professor Herb Strenz, as published in the Des Moines Register, comes this little ditty, "John Ashcroft is Coming to Town," sung to the tune of the Santa original. Here's the gist:

He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
gonna find out who's naughty or nice:
John Ashcroft is coming to town!

They'll know when you're speaking out,
They'll know when you dissent,
They'll know when you don't salute,
But they won't tell where you're sent!

...Closed trials and secret arrests,
All in store for those he detests:
John Ashcroft is coming to town.

....Wire taps and pen registers,
Just fun toys for justice jesters:
John Ashcroft is coming to town.

....Agents in U-S spyland will have a jubilee,
They're gonna fill their data banks,
With the scoop on you and me.

Ohh.You better watch out, you better not cry,
You better not pout, I'm telling you why:
John Ashcroft is coming to town.

Update: Ashcroft will be speaking Monday at 2pm at the Boise Depot in Boise, Idaho. The speech is open to the media but closed to the public.

We found a section on the Justice Department's new Life and Liberty website that brags about the legal challenges the Government has won in its war on terror:

• Enemy combatant detention authority: SUSTAINED
• Guantanamo Bay detention authority: SUSTAINED
• FISA information sharing authority: SUSTAINED
• Withholding names of sensitive immigration detainees: SUSTAINED
• President’s authority to freeze assets of purported charities that fund terrorists: SUSTAINED
• No provision of the Patriot Act has been held unconstitutional by any court.

Then we found this list of civil liberties abuses on the ACLU website.

• The June DOJ Inspector General report detailing widespread and systematic abuses of the hundreds of Arab, Muslim and South Asian men detained in the weeks after 9/11. The report showed that, even though the men were found to have no connection whatsoever to the attacks on September 11, they were held for extreme amounts of time - in some cases for several months - under a quasi-official "no-bond, no-lawyers" policy. Although the Justice Department’s response has been a pat "we did nothing illegal," it’s clear that most of the detainees were held on pretextual immigration violations such as an expired visa or incomplete paperwork.
• The proposed neighbor-spying-on-neighbor program called Operation TIPS, which would have recruited Americans whose jobs - such as cable repair persons and postal workers - grant them easy access to our homes as government informers, charged with reporting "suspicious activity" to a dedicated tips hotline.
• The plan to base the number of investigations in any given FBI jurisdiction on demographic criteria, including the number of mosques in the area.
• The initiative at the DOJ to force local and state police to enforce immigration laws, a plan opposed not only by immigrants’ advocates but also by law enforcement officials themselves.

We think the lists should be combined. The Justice Department's legal "wins" are nothing more than civil liberties abuses, masquerading as accomplishments. Not one of the legal wins make us feel any safer. All of them make us feel less free.

Add the two lists together, and you have a picture of where this country is headed under Bush and Ashcroft. Protest now, while you still can.

Buzzflash has the text of Presidential hopeful Bob Graham's blast against John Ashcroft.

“I’m glad Attorney General John Ashcroft has left behind his cozy confines in Washington and is traveling the country to meet with regular folks for once. Hopefully, it will do the Attorney General some good to hear from the American people on how his extreme policies have hurt this nation. I only wish that he would actually listen to the people of America as he tours the country and upon returning to Washington straighten up his far-right Justice Department.

“I feared John Ashcroft would become just this kind of Attorney General when I voted against his confirmation in 2001. His Justice Department has demonstrated a willful lack of commitment to the basic fairness and equality of opportunity that has made this country all that it is today.

“I, along with 98 other United States Senators, supported the passage of the Patriot Act. Never did I expect it to be implemented the way it has. Mr. Ashcroft has chosen to destroy our civil liberties under the premise of personal security and safety; the true spirit in which the law was written.”

The Buzz should be one of your first reading stops every day. It's continuously updated, wittily headlined and always relevant.

Police in Tampa have voluntarily scrapped its controversial face recognition surveillance system. It failed to result in any arrests or even positive identifications

In June 2001, Tampa became the first city in the nation to install the software to scan faces in the Ybor City nightlife district and check them against a database of more than 24,000 felons, sexual predators and runaway children.

But critics said it violated privacy rights, forcing people, without their consent, into what amounted to an electronic police lineup.

"People have the right to be anonymous, and not to be put in a police lineup for committing the offense of walking down a public street," said Darlene Williams, chairwoman of the Tampa area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The program was called FaceIt--manufactured by a company named Visonics, that now goes by the name of Identix, Inc. Visonics had donated the system to Tampa on a trial basis.

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National Consumer Coalition’s Privacy Group has a website section Heroes and Villians that this week names Attorney General John Ashcroft as the " Privacy Villian of the Week" for his upcoming tour garnering support for the Patriot and Victory Acts. We now have a draft of the Victory Act and can confirm that it contains some abominable provisions that will further eviscerate the privacy interests of all Americans. Here are a few, as described by Heroes and Villians:

The full name of the VICTORY Act is the "Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003," and like the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorists" (USA PATRIOT) Act, it is a grab bag of enhanced police-state powers only tangentially related to its bombastic and acronymic title. It is Title V of the VICTORY Act that has the most direct effects on consumer privacy.

Section 503 grants the Attorney General the power to issue "administrative subpoenas" in investigations related to the extremely broad definition of "terrorism" instituted in the USA PATRIOT Act. (An "administrative subpoena" is like a search warrant automatically issued by the Clerk of Court, except without the bother of having a judge sign off on it.) This investigatory power of the DoJ includes the ability to subpoena consumer data from a business. And if so ordered by the Court, the business would not be able to tell anyone about the subpoena for 90 days. Infinite 90-day extensions of this time limit are also available.

This power would be very analogous to the USA PATRIOT Act search warrants issued by the secret FISA court. The House of Representatives has voted to defund enforcement of such warrants on bookstores and libraries.

Then there is Section 504:

In the new issue of Newsweek, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman provide new details of Attorney General John Ashcroft's 19 city tour that begins this week to garner public support for the Patriot Act and similar legislation he will ask Congress to pass in the near future. The first paragraph alone makes us shudder.

OVER THE NEXT three weeks, Ashcroft plans to swoop into 18 cities, give speeches, meet local officials and grant select press interviews touting department successes using the law. In a conference call and e-mails last week, sources tell NEWSWEEK, the country’s 94 U.S. attorneys were instructed to help gin up support by convening “community meetings,” writing op-ed articles in local newspapers and ensuring that uniformed cops are seated in bleachers behind the A.G. during his visits.

For more on the tour and the new powers Ashcroft is seeking, go here and here.