December 7th, anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, now has a another reason to be called "a day that will live in infamy."

     On December 7, 2004, Congress passed a new 3003-page "national security" act, dubbed Patriot II. Like the first Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Patriot II gives the government tremendous new powers to spy upon, control and imprison ordinary Americans like you.

     Patriot II has another ominous similarity to Patriot I: Almost no one in Congress had seen a copy of the final bill before it was enacted.

• Creates a National ID card. After a one-year study period, the Department of Homeland Security will mandate standards for all state driver's licenses, including "biometric ID provisions," which can include your fingerprints, retinal scans, and other biometric identifiers, such as your DNA.
       The new high-tech national ID cards will be required for boarding planes, cruise ships, and for driving a car. That means they can be used as Soviet-style internal passports, making anyone deemed "suspect" unable to travel in their own country.

• Eliminates bail for anyone accused of terrorism. That means that thousands of U.S. citizens could be detained indefinitely like the prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

• Makes dozens of minor offenses "terrorist crimes". Under Patriot II, you are a terrorist if you possess dangerous materials or make a false report about a death of a member of the armed forces. As Michael Ketcher, editor of the Financial Privacy Report, points out, "While such crimes may be reprehensible, they are not necessarily 'terrorist' acts. Schoolboy pranks could be deemed to be terrorist acts under these laws."

• Makes groups such as labor unions and churches "terrorist organizations" if they engage in "violence" or "intimidation" to achieve political ends. That means that churches or labor unions that participate in a political demonstration – such as an anti-abortion or anti-war demonstration – at which a fight breaks out, could be labeled "terrorist organizations" – along with all of their members.
       Even before the passage of Patriot II, federal laws such as RICO anti-racketeering statues, have been used to arrest church members or imprison labor union leaders who sponsored demonstrations that resulted in violence. Patriot II will make that much easier and more common, particular if a group strongly opposes the policies of whatever group is in power.

• Criminalizes charitable donations to groups when even $1 ends up in terrorist hands. As documented in my book Surviving Terrorism, shortly after 9/11 many large Muslim charities had all of their assets seized, because of federal allegations that some of the money may have ended up in terrorist hands.
       Most of these charities were completely legitimate. Thousands of impoverished men, women and children depended upon them for help. But because funds were sent to a region of the world rife with violence and terrorism, entire organizations were shut down, and everything they and their principals owned was seized without trial.
       Patriot II takes that terrible precedent a step further, making it a crime to even inadvertently provide money, assistance, or housing to anyone belonging to a group labeled "terrorist" (either before or after you donate). That means that henceforth landlords and realtors will have to check any prospective tenants and property buyers against the latest government list of suspected terrorists. However, even that may not protect property owners, since many suspects may not be on official lists for national security reasons.

• Massive surveillance on millions of Americans. Previously the government had to show that a person was part of a foreign government or terrorist group before they could be wiretapped without court supervision. Now all federal agents have to do is claim someone might be a "lone-wolf terrorist" and court supervision is out the window.
      In effect, this provision allows the government to wiretap even law-abiding Americans at will and monitor everyone's Internet surfing and e-mails – a capability the FBI insisted be provided by all Internet service providers and phone companies a few years ago.

• Centralizes surveillance under a national intelligence Czar Together with the new National ID cards and a central government database to implement them, this means that the government will be able to track – and at will block – any of your physical movements or any of your financial movements.

     If you think you have nothing to hide, think again. There are now some 11 million laws in effect in the U.S. making it virtually impossible to live and not break one of these laws. In fact one study found that 100% of college students had broken a law for which other individuals were serving time in prison.

     As Michael Ketcher points out, "Patriot II is simply a huge expansion of federal power. It will add billions of dollars to the federal budget deficit, choke off more of our freedom and privacy, and do little or nothing to protect the country from terrorists.

     "Laws like these not only destroy freedom and privacy, they hurt the economy. One big reason the U.S. dollar has been in free-fall has been all of these anti-terrorist laws. No one wants to invest in a country that is moving towards bigger government, higher spending, higher taxes – and less freedom."

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