Posted by Orin Kerr:
The Continuing Hunt for Patriot Act Abuses:
Haven't heard about any abuses of the Patriot Act recently? It's not
because no one is looking. The Patriot Act requires the Justice
Department's Office of Inspector General to collect complaints about
alleged civil liberties abuses and to put out a report every six
months cataloging the findings. The first one of these reports made
front-page news a few years ago when the press failed to understand
the difference between allegations of abuses and actual cases of
abuses; the New York Times, for example, accidentally reported the
fomer as the latter. When it became clear that the allegations were
unfounded, the story quickly fell out of the media spotlight.
These days, the DOJ OIG report comes and goes with no fanfare or
press attention. Why? Because the DOJ isn't finding much in the way of
abuses, and isn't finding anything at all related to the Patiot Act.
Consider the stats from [1]the latest report, released on Friday.
DOJ received 1,943 complaints about alleged civil liberties abuses. Of
these, 1,748 either did not warrant an investigation or were outside
DOJ's jurisdiction:
Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made
allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example,
some of the complaints alleged that government agents were
broadcasting signals that interfere with a person�s thoughts or
dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with
hallucinogenic drugs. The remaining one-quarter of the 1,748
complaints in this category involved allegations against agencies
or entities outside of the DOJ, including other federal agencies,
local governments, or private businesses. We referred those
complaints to the appropriate entity or advised complainants of the
entity with jurisdiction over their allegations.
Of the 195 complaints that did warrant investigation, 170 involved
what the report describes as "management issues" rather than civil
liberties abuses, such as reports by "inmates [who] complained about
the general conditions at federal prisons, such as the poor quality of
the food or the lack of hygiene products."
DOJ requested additional information of the remaining 25 cases, and
did not receive responses from complainants in 12 of the cases. Of the
remaining 13 cases, one was a sexual harassment complaint against a
prison guard, and the rest raised "largely administrative" mattters.
The report does not detail the nature of the allegations, but does add
that "none of the complaints . . . processed . . . alleged misconduct
by DOJ employees relating to use of a provision in the Patriot Act."
Of course, the fact that the DOJ isn't finding any Patriot
Act-related abuses doesn't mean that no abuses have occurred. DOJ's
jurisdiction is limited, and not all abuses are likely to lead to
reports. At the same time, it's interesting to note that the DOJ
report is consistently failing to find any misconduct related to the
Patriot Act.
References
1. http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0503/final.pdf
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