"Just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the “USA PATRIOT Act,” an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens and reduced checks and balances on those powers, such as judicial oversight. The government never demonstrated that restraints on surveillance had contributed to the attack, and indeed much of the new legislation had nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Rather, the bill represented a successful use of the terrorist attacks by the FBI to roll back unwanted checks on its power. . . . Under these changes and other authorities asserted by the Bush Administration, U.S. intelligence agents could conduct a secret search of an American citizen's home, use evidence found there to declare him an “enemy combatant,” and imprison him without trial. The courts would have no chance to review these decisions -- indeed, they might never even find out about them."

"Many people do not know that the USA PATRIOT Act was already written and ready to go long before September 11th. . . . Similar antiterrorism legislation was enacted in the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, which however did little to prevent the events of 9/11, and many provisions had either been declared unconstitutional or were about to be repealed when 9/11 occurred. . . . History . . . shows that the Reagan and Bush I Administrations repeatedly attempted to push such laws through. Oklahoma City proved that only a `real' terrorist attack would convince Congress. Furthermore, it is obvious that the proponents of this amendment [to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)] know it is an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. They have had many years to think about it and have repeatedly shown their willingness to enact carefully crafted, unconstitutional laws."

"[T]he USA PATRIOT Act . . . stands out as radical in its design. To an unprecedented degree, the Act sacrifices our political freedoms in the name of national security and upsets the democratic values that define our nation by consolidating vast new powers in the executive branch of government. . . . Chillingly, the Attorney General's response to the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act was not a pledge to use his new powers responsibly and guard against their abuse, but instead was a vow to step up his detention efforts. Conflating immigrant status with terrorist status, he declared: `Let the terrorists among us be warned, if you overstay your visas even by one day, we will arrest you.' . . . The Administration's blatant power grab, coupled with the wide array of anti-terrorism tools that the USA PATRIOT Act puts at its disposal, portends a wholesale suspension of civil liberties that will reach far beyond those who are involved in terrorist activities."