TalkLeft, among dozens of other blogs, is reporting on what’s being called “USA Patriot Act II”. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a copy of the draft legislation (in pdf and very slow to download since the server is being hit very hard. Try the pdf at this alternate site.)

There are many frightening provisions of this bill including:

• restrictions on Freedom of Information Act requests,
• creation of a DNA database for those suspected of terrorism,
• expansion of the surveillance powers of the FBI,
• exemptions from civil liability for people and businesses who voluntarily turn info over to the government,
• discontinuation of consent decrees imposed on police departments found to be violating civil rights and other laws (although, the language of this provision specifically exempts any departments guilty of racial profiling…),
• extradition of foreigners to countries with which we have no extradition treaties,
• criminalizing the use of encryption to conceal incriminating communications,
• removal of the statute of limitations for any terrorist crimes, including cyberterrorism,
• expansion of the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty,
• and freezing assets of any individual planning or acting against a foreign state while in the US.

Quite a list, huh? And this monster touches everything from OSHA to the IRS to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. To me, however, the scariest section is Section 501, “Expatriation of Terrorists.” According to the analysis at the Center for Public Integrity:

What is a ‘terrorist organization’? It’s what the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, says it is.

It is such a loose definition that, for example: if a member of the Friends of the Earth UK slashes the tires of an Exxon oil-tanker truck scheduled to transport a load of crude to the refinery, and if you — an American — have given money to the society, or helped do fundraising for them, and if the Secretary of State, under pressure from all the petroleum-coated hacks in the current administration, has declared that FoE should be added to the list of terrorist organizations, then you, having provided material support to that group, are subject to expatriation. (Don’t believe it? Check out the definitions of terrorist activities here.)

The US Supreme Court, in the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk, (387 U.S. 253) stated that

That decision was sustained in 1980 in Vance v. Terrazas, (444 U.S. 252), where the majority stated

Under the standards set out in Terrazas, it would be up to the government to show by “a preponderance of the evidence” that you knew that the money you gave to FoE would be supporting these “terrorist attacks”. It would be assumed that the donation was voluntary, and the burden of proof would be on you to show that you gave the money under duress.

How the forced expatriation of this new Act would (will?) hold up under the gaze of this Supreme Court — especially since both Terrazas and Afroyim were 5-4 decisions — anyone’s guess.

Still, the thought of becoming another Philip Nolan — a Man Without a Country — for a donation or the support of a cause, is a truly horrifying future.

RuminateThis has a terrific example of what I call “censorship by neglect.” Seems Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have introduced a bill which would overturn the “Iraq Use of Force Resolution” passed by the Congress last October.

In an entry titled, “WE DECIDED NOT TO RUN IT…”, Lisa E. demonstrates the utter lack of interest by the US media in this bill. The Washington Post is the source of the title, giving no reason other than an editorial whim to quash the story. Some of the commenter’s on Lisa’s blog suggest that it’s not an important story because there is virtually no chance of it passing. If that standard were applied to sports, the only baseball games that would be broadcast would be the New York Yankees. Others comment that its only sponsored by two representatives out of 435, but that ignores the 28 other representatives who have signed on as co-sponsors.

I agree with Lisa that the real reason is the press is too busy lobbing Nerf-balls to Colin Powell (and giggling about wacko Michael Jackson) and is therefore stretched too thin to cover any other stories.

Which calls to mind the possibility that we may be getting ourselves into two wars right about now — Iraq and North Korea — and our official dismissal of the North Korean situation as a minor crisis. Perhaps our Secretary of Defense is right and we can fight two wars at once, but maybe the reason we’re ignoring one of them is that our government is so tightly focused on Iraq, they are unable to do the multi-tasking necessary to deal with North Korea at the same time. Too bad the choice lies with Pyongyang.

The “Patent Clause” of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause gives Congress the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” For a long time, the standard for what was patentable required the invention contain a “flash of genius.” In 1952, Congress lowered the standard to “nonobviousness” to a person of ordinary skill. In the early 1980s, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) began issuing patents on animals and plants, and in the 1990s, it began issuing “business methods” patents.

The problem with all this expansion of patentable inventions is that the PTO relies on the person filing the patent to disclose evidence of “prior art” — earlier implementations of the invention which is being submitted for patent protection. No conflict of interest there, right?

This has led to some moronic patent approvals, including British Telecom’s patent (rescinded) on hyperlinking, Amazon’s “1-Click Checkout“, Forgent’s claim to have a patent on the JPEG file format, and so many others.

The past couple of weeks have brought another batch of idiocies to light. SBC (one of the Baby Bells) claims to have a valid patent on a “Structured Document Browser,” or what you and I (and any long-time Web-user) would call a framed navigation system; this is where the menus stay put, while the content of the page changes.

As I reported to LawMeme, a company called Test Central, Inc. has received a patent for a “…method of making tests, assessments, surveys and lesson plans with images and sound files and posting them on-line for potential users.” Non-obvious, right?

And a company called Acacia Technologies, is sending requests for licensing fees to companies providing streaming content. Acacia’s patent is for a “… system of distributing video and/or audio information [which] employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression.” That seems to include online radio, video, perhaps JPEG images and who knows what else.

The Los Angeles Times has a 2-part story (1, 2) about recent patent issues, including the patenting of crustless peanut-butter & jelly sandwiches and last year’s joke patent for a method of swinging on a swing, “…in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.”

The “Progress of Science and the Useful Arts” is being stymied by such ridiculous patent approvals; companies with legitimate challenges to patents are discouraged by the exorbitant costs of defending themselves against patent infringement lawsuits. Part of the problem is defining exactly what an “invention” is. Is it something you yourself have created? Or is it just something you’ve file papers on?