As I was watching the O’reilly Factor on Fox News I heard one of their senior law officials informing Mr. O’reilly on some of the dangers of the Patriot Act. One of the most outrageous things he mentioned, among many others, was that the FBI, or I’m assuming any gov’t organization with the proper go ahead, can break into one’s home and rummage through their belongings without even getting concent from a judge. On top of this, the government can “frame” thugs for this act, and while not sending anybody to jail wasting our local police officers time and effort on falsified crimes. Is this completely true, and have their been any documented cases of it taking place here in the USA since the Patriot Act was enacted?
No, it’s not true.
All of it, or just a part of it?
Any law enforcement entity, with a warrant, may break into your house and rummage through your things. The Patriot Act permits this in more circumstances than wer epreviously the case, but does not do away with the requirement for judicial approval. So “without even getting concent [sic] from a judge” is not an accurate statement.
There is no provision of the Act that permits the government to “frame” thugs.
Well assuming that the government does break into suspected terrorists houses and rummage through them, who would the police think broke into the house? Wouldn’t it be assumed that thugs did the deed, since I highly doubt the gov’t leaves a nice little calling card. I mean realistically wouldn’t they have to set up somebody to take the fall?
If it’s a clandestine warrant, such as to place a bug, they’re going to go to great lengths not to disturb the place.
Right, but the guest on the O’reilly Factor was talking more along the lines of rummaging through a place or residence in search for financial records or something along those lines.
A big expansion of FBI power in the PATRIOT Act is to allow sneak and peek searches where you don’t have to be notified of the search even after it is completed and they found nothing.
No, they cannot frame thugs. If they do a sloppy enough job to make you wonder about somone rifling through your stuff, then the FBI is plainly SOL.
Can Federal Marshals enter your home without a warrant?
Only under such circumstances as any other law enforcement officer could enter your home without a warrant - and there are some circumstances, which pre-date the Patriot Act considerably.
“Exigent circumstances” is one such exception. Federal marshals - or any law enforcement officer - could enter your home in such emergency situations as required to protect lives or prevent the destruction of evidence.
The “community caretaker” exception permits law enforcement officers - probably NOT federal marshals, although I imagine that a circumstance may arise in which this exception might apply to them - to enter your home if their purpose is not enforcement of the law, but providing aid and assistance. For example, if an elderly resident has not been seen for several days, police may enter her home to check on her well-being.
The most commonly-used circumstance in which federal marshals, or other law enforcement officers, may enter your home without a warrant is consent.
You’ve just committed the fallacy of equivocation. Your first statement was that the federal government could “frame” thugs. “Frame” suggests a specific attempt to pin the crime on someone, to leave or promote false evidence, or to falsely accuse someone.
Now, in contrast, you’re asking what the local police might conclude, if the owner of the searched property realizes he’s been searched and calls them. I suppose the police, lacking any specific evidence, might well blame generic “thugs,” but that’s not remotely the same as actually assigning suspicion to a particular individual. And since neither the Patriot Act nor any other law permits the feds to “set up somebody to take the fall,” they cannot legally do that.
- Rick
This part probably came from taking another federal law (ECPA, often linked with the Patriot Act) out of context. One part of this act allows the FBI to obtain information from third parties (communications companies, financial companies, etc.) on the authority of “national security letters”. This was essentially a search warrant with no judicial oversight. A federal court recently struck this down as a violation of both the First and Fourth Amendments.
Not that legal restrictions always stops the FBI, of course. They broke into and rummaged through the offices of many groups opposed to Reagan’s Central America policies in the 80’s. And don’t forget about COINTELPRO before that, which concentrated not on framing random ‘thugs’, but on framing Martin Luther King and pretty much anyone in the civil rights movement.
Police have been known to do “secret” searches of houses for many years.
The law requires that they get a search warrant, and that, if you are not home, they leave a copy in the house.
So the procedure is this:
- they get a search warrant from a judge.
- they come by at a time when they expect that you are not home.
- they ‘break’ into your house, but without actually breaking anything. (Pick the lock, bypass the lock, enter thru an open window, use the landlord’s key, etc. Police can be pretty good at this.)
- search carefully so as not to disturb things, or leave signs of a search. Xerox documents, and leave the originals in place. Copy your computer files. Etc.
- before departing, leave a copy of the search warrant, as legally required. But leave it in a place that appears reasonable, but where the occupant is not likely to find it for quite a while. For example, put it in the pocket of a coat hanging in the front closet. But in Minnesota, in the winter, put it in the coat at the end of the rack – a light, summer-weight windbreaker that isn’t likely to be worn for months. You can honestly say in court that you put it in the first coat in the closet. Or put it as the first item (bottom of the stack) in a stack of bills on their desk, especially if you see that many of the bills are months old.
The effect of this is that they have done a legal search of the house, but the suspect probably won’t know about it for weeks or months. And most police investigations are over in less than that.
This is common enough that it’s often been mentioned in mystery books. For example, I remember seeing it in the John Sanford “Prey” series.
Well, then if they use that loophole, why not amend the law so it states that the warrant MUST be posted somewhere prominantly, like on the front door, or something like that?
Because if the person is guilty of something, there is a chance they could skip town! :smack:
And if they were innocent, well, they won’t even know they were searched for quite some time.
IIRC way back to the dawn of time when the Patriot Act was but young, one complaint about it was that for certain kinds of warrants the judge could not say “no”/refuse to sign - judicial oversight of a sort was still required but it was more that the Feds would have to keep the judiciary informed rather than get approval.
Of course that might have merely been one of the phantoms of lost liberty to which the AG was referring.
The guest that saluki_fan mentions was not a “guest”, he is a regular Fox contributor. His title is Judge but I do not know how to spell his last name. saluki_fan did an excellent job of stating what the Judge said. This was said in regards to the two cases that are being put before the Supreme Court this session. The Judge thinks that in both cases the Patriot Act will be found to be unconstitutional. IMHO that is the correct process for such matters.
This is true, although perhaps misleading. The USA PATRIOT Act allows such searches to be performed without a warrant from a judge. They still have to get paperwork, but the U.S. Judicial system is no longer involved. A further twist. They can go into your neighborhood bookstore (or Amazon.com, or whatever) and demand to see records of what you’ve purchased. That bookseller is forbidden to tell you that such a request was made. Many stores (including mine) destroy records of political book purchases, and some (most notably the Tattered Cover in Denver) have filed lawsuits to try and stop this from happening without a proper warrant from a judge.
I believe this is the law that was recently struck down, cited in my earlier post. If there is additional support for this in the Patriot Act, please provide a cite.
No. Not true, at least as far as search warrants go.
The burden of proof is on you: please cite the provision of the Patriot Act that does what you describe.
I don’t really care what some random person said. The plain language of the Patriot Act is available in many places on the web. It does not authorize searches without judicial approval. If you claim that it does, then point out the section.
Not true. Provide a cite.
This is worse than deunking the ‘gry’ puzzle! Mindless repetition of the same flase claim.
- Rick