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.
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."
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."
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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