Patriot Act allows surge of secret searches in United States

By Richard Schmitt
Los Angeles Times

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WASHINGTON — Underscoring changes in domestic surveillance allowed under the USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department said in a report released today that it conducted hundreds more secret searches in the United States last year under foreign intelligence surveillance laws.

The department said the use of covert search powers, which were enhanced under the Patriot Act, shows how federal investigators have stepped up the war against terrorism in the United States over the past 32 months.

But civil-liberties groups expressed concern over the increase because the targets of the searches are given fewer legal protections than suspects in normal criminal cases. The process of obtaining approval and executing the searches and surveillance also is shrouded in secrecy.

In an annual report to Congress, the Justice Department said it obtained approval to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches in more than 1,700 intelligence cases last year. According to the Justice Department, the number of searches has surged 85 percent in the past two years; about 1,200 searches were authorized in 2002, and only 900 in 2001.

The report did not identify or discuss specific cases.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a prepared statement that the data illustrated how the Justice Department and the FBI are "acting judiciously and moving aggressively" to uncover and prevent terrorist attacks in the United States. "These court-approved surveillance and search orders are vital to keeping America safe from terror," Ashcroft said.

The burst of activity is a direct result of the easing of standards for intelligence-gathering that was authorized by the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law enacted six weeks after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Under the new law, the government can obtain secret warrants by showing that a significant purpose of the search has to do with intelligence-gathering, as opposed to a criminal investigation.

The new procedures were upheld in court in November 2002.
 
The search applications are reviewed by a federal tribunal known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as FISA for the act it regulates. The court was set up in the mid-1970s as a check on government power amid revelations of massive illegal spying on political dissidents and other citizens by the FBI.

But the court — whose proceedings are secret — has become a lightning rod for civil-liberties concerns in the post-Sept. 11 era.

A major fear is that investigators are using FISA procedures to bypass stricter requirements that cover the issuance of search warrants in criminal cases, in which the government must show probable cause that a crime was committed. The concern is that the process is enabling the government to chip away at protections afforded defendants under the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal searches.

Information gleaned from the intelligence searches can be used later in criminal prosecutions, but defendants in such proceedings have fewer rights to attack the basis of the searches or to obtain intercepted information.

Moreover, if intelligence searches do not lead to criminal prosecutions, targets never are told that they were under surveillance; criminal suspects, even if never charged, must receive notice of any surveillance.

"The real mistakes never come to light" in intelligence cases, said James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington think tank.