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Compromise Reached on Renewing Patriot Act

House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise agreement Thursday to extend the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, but critics from both parties said they found the plan unacceptable because it did not go far enough in protecting Americans' civil liberties. The plan is expected to come up for final votes in the House and Senate early next week, but its passage was uncertain Thursday, with some Democrats, including Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, threatening a filibuster to block a vote. After weeks of what negotiators described as extremely difficult negotiations, the compromise plan would retain most of the expanded surveillance and investigative powers given to the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks, permanently extending 14 of 16 provisions set to expire at the end of the year. But it would also put in place additional judicial oversight and safeguards against abuse. Three of the most-debated measures would have to be reviewed again by Congress in four years, rather than the seven-year window originally favored by some House leaders in a tentative agreement that was reached last month but then derailed by last-minute concerns from members of both parties. Those measures that would be extended for four years involve the government's ability to demand records from libraries and other institutions, conduct "roving wiretaps" in surveillance operations and single out "lone wolf" terrorists who operate independently of a larger group. In another concession to lawmakers who pushed for greater government restrictions, the plan agreed to on Thursday eliminated a proposal that would make it a crime punishable by one year in prison for anyone receiving certain types of records demands from the government to disclose them publicly....

Reform the Patriot Act

Despite the insistence of the White House and the Republican congressional leadership that the Patriot Act be fully reauthorized before the Thanksgiving break, a coalition of Republican and Democratic senators blocked the Senate-House conference report until vital changes in the Patriot Act are made. They have rising support around the nation when Congress returns on Dec. 16. Dec. 15 is Bill of Rights Day, celebrating the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, without which our founding document would not have become the law of the land. I congratulate the patriotic resisters in and out of the Senate for not allowing the administration to retain sections of the Patriot Act, which 399 towns and cities across the country and seven state legislatures had told their representatives in Congress to change in compliance with the Bill of Rights. Begun in Northampton, Mass., in November 2001, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, led by Nancy Talanian, has been instrumental in the national organizing of these resolutions to Congress through a subsequent alliance with the American Civil Liberties Union and a range of conservative libertarian organizations. Currently among those insisting on essential Patriot Act reforms are the American Conservative Union, the American Library Association and such business groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. These business organizations have joined with civil libertarians to focus on the Patriot Act's sweeping expansion of government powers to obtain a huge range of personal information by claiming only that the records are "relevant to an authorized investigation" on terrorism....

Ex-Professor Acquitted in Patriot Act Test Case

In a case closely watched as a key test of the Patriot Act, a former university professor accused of helping lead a Palestinian terrorist organization was acquitted Tuesday on nearly half of the charges against him, and the jury deadlocked on the rest. Sami Al-Arian, who taught computer engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa, wept and embraced his lawyer after the federal jury found him not guilty on eight of 17 counts — including conspiring to murder and maim people outside the United States. The panel deadlocked on charges that he had, among other things, engaged in money laundering and attempted to illegally obtain U.S. citizenship. The government also failed to secure convictions against three codefendants with alleged ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and other attacks that have killed more than 100 people in Israel and the occupied territories. Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut were acquitted on all charges. Hatem Naji Fariz was found not guilty on 24 counts, and jurors failed to reach a verdict on eight others. Federal prosecutors had no comment Tuesday on what was, for them, a dismaying outcome after 13 days of jury deliberations and five months of detailed testimony. U.S. Atty. Paul Perez said he and his staff would review the case before deciding whether to retry Al-Arian, 47. Until then, he will remain in jail....

Report Finds Cover-Up in an F.B.I. Terror Case

Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a Florida terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort to cover repeated missteps and retaliated against an agent who first complained about the problems, Justice Department investigators have concluded. In one instance, someone altered dates on three F.B.I. forms using correction fluid to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law, according to a draft report of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general's office obtained by The New York Times. But investigators were unable to determine who altered the documents. The agent who first alerted the F.B.I. to problems in the case, a veteran undercover operative named Mike German, was "retaliated against" by his boss, who was angered by the agent's complaints and stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training new undercover agents, the draft report concluded. Mr. German's case first became public last year, as he emerged as the latest in a string of whistle-blowers at the bureau who said they had been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror investigations and other matters since Sept. 11, 2001. The inspector general's draft report, dated Nov. 15 and awaiting final review, validated most of Mr. German's central accusations in the case. But the former agent, who left the bureau last year after he said his career had been derailed by the Florida episode, said he felt more disappointment than vindication....

Crime Database Often Wrong on Immigration, Study Finds

More than 8,000 people have been mistakenly tagged for immigration violations as a result of the Bush administration's strategy of entering the names of thousands of immigrants in a national crime database meant to help apprehend terrorism suspects, according to a study released on Thursday. The study, conducted by the Migration Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, relied on statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security that covered 2002 to 2004. The study found that the national crime database was wrong in 42 percent of the cases in which it identified immigrants stopped by the local police as being wanted by domestic security officials. Many immigration violations, like overstaying a visa, are civil infractions, not criminal offenses typically handled by the police. But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, domestic security officials have worked to encourage states and localities to help enforce immigration laws by adding the names of thousands of violators - like immigrants evading deportation orders - to the F.B.I. crime database....

Security Flaw Allows Wiretaps to Be Evaded, Study Finds

The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely, according to research by computer security experts who studied the system. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed, they said. Someone being wiretapped can easily employ these "devastating countermeasures" with off-the-shelf equipment, said the lead researcher, Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. "This has implications not only for the accuracy of the intelligence that can be obtained from these taps, but also for the acceptability and weight of legal evidence derived from it," Mr. Blaze and his colleagues wrote in a paper that will be published today in Security & Privacy, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. According to the Justice Department's most recent wiretap report, state and federal courts authorized 1,710 "interceptions" of communications in 2004....

An apology and check from Ranger Roger Mayo

The denouement of a shameful episode which began in September 2003 – involving an off duty National Park ranger, a dozen motorcyclists, a garden hose and a cup of coffee – was played out a week ago when $400 in settlement money was donated to the Stinson Beach Fire Department. The 2003 incident and subsequent events would reverberate through the community, altering dramatically the life of the ranger and the newspaper publisher that pursued his exposé. In the incident which occurred on Sept. 21, 2003, storied National Park Service ranger Roger Mayo turned a garden hose on a group of motorcyclists northbound on Highway 1 in front of his then Park Service home in the Olema Valley. Subsequent to the garden hose event, Roger Mayo was one of two Point Reyes National Seashore rangers who took part in a July 28, 2004 incident involving the pepper-spraying of an Inverness Park girl, 17, and her brother, 18, in Point Reyes Station. The two, Jessica and Chris Miller, were bystanders at a minor law-enforcement matter and tried to find out what was going on. Neither was charged with wrongdoing, and their Civil Rights lawsuit against rangers Roger Mayo and Angelina Gregorio, as well as National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher and chief ranger Colin Smith, was filed in federal court. In a settlement reached last September, the US Department of the Interior agreed to pay two Inverness Park teenagers $50,000 in compensation....

MSP To Test Behavioral Screening System

St. Paul International Airport will begin testing next month of a new passenger-screening system that gives greater weight to how people act than to what they're carrying. Airport police said Saturday that a unit trained by former Israeli airport security experts in "behavioral pattern recognition" will begin work in January. The unit will work with the Transportation Security Administration, which began testing a similar system at the airport last month. The announcement follows one Friday from the TSA that said travelers could resume carrying items such as small scissors and screwdrivers on planes starting Dec. 22. It makes sense to focus on people instead of what's in their pockets, said Jim Welna, deputy federal security director for the Twin Cities, Rochester and St. Cloud airports. "We're looking for a needle in a haystack every day," he said. "And most days, the needle is not there." The new units, he said, will look for anxious, frightened or deceptive behaviors. Travelers who arouse suspicion will be questioned, and their answers will be scored against a secret index. When people scores high, screeners will call airport police, who would then decide whether to ask the travelers more questions, call counterterrorism agents, or allow them to go on their way. Welna said Minneapolis is the second large U.S. airport to test the new system, called Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT. Boston's Logan International Airport was the first....