Part of the Patriot Act is a whole other money laundering bill- with many provisions NOT about terrorism- that was publically included by congress into the Patriot Act.
DOJ used those laws against money laundering exactly as congress intended.
They never said they wouldn't.
Some "tools" (like administrative subpoenas) were only for certain specific crimes, so of course DOJ couldn't use them for crimes that they were not authorized for!
That's obvious. That's why those "tools" had to be authorized in the Patriot Act to be used for terrorism investigations.
These are serious laws and people are rightfully concerned. It seems to me we're getting a pretty good public debate on these follow-on anti-terrorism proposals.
I hope that will improve the proposals, and we won't have the hyperbole and just plain lying about them like we had after the Patriot Act passed.
I repeat: I never said they said they wouldn't use them! For the third time, I said that DOJ justified the Patriot Act by saying it merely expands to terrorism tools they already *had* to fight money laundering, racketeering, and other crimes. My point is: if that's true, and they already had these tools for other crimes, then why are they now using Patriot for these crimes??? They claimed they already had other tools.
My point is that their use of Patriot for other crimes means that they lied when they said they already had tools to fight said other crimes. Otherwise, why wouldn't they use the existing tools?