Republican Pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano says Patriot Act contains dangerous “Self-Written Search Warrant” provision

I was pleased today to be in my car for a few minutes over the noon hours and turned on our talk station and heard Republican pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano scream about the “Self-Written Search Warrant” provisions of the Patriot Act. Judge Napolitano was sitting in for Bill O’Reilly on the February 17, 2006 show.

Judge Napolitano said that British soldiers, 200+ years ago, wrote their own search warrants in order to invade colonists’ homes searching for things like whether the colonists had bought their British tax stamps to affix to their personal effects [Remember the “Stamp Act” stuff from history class?]. Such governmental abuses led to our revolution.

After the revolution, we wrote the 4th Amendment, requiring a proper judicial warrant upon probable cause, in order for a search to occur.

Then Judge Napolitano talked about the Patriot Act, and its creation of the National Security Letters, which he called “Self-Written Search Warrants” (SWSW).

Agents write SWSWs and send them to our EMPLOYERS, our LAWYERS, our DOCTORS, etc, and the recipients of the letters cannot challenge them or even reveal that they have received them.

Judge Napolitano likens the Patriot Act’s SWSW provisions with the way the British abused the colonists 200+ years ago.

Moreover, he expressly stated that the SWSW provisions give the USA government the kind of police state powers of the STASI, or the KGB.

I had quite a time listening to Judge Napolitano. He’s not on board with Republican spin about how we can trust Bush and Company with all of these awesome new powers. The Judge is taking the long view —— we can’t trust ANY government with so much power.

The Judge’s presentation tracks an article he wrote in December. I am excerpting the article below.

How Congress Has Assaulted Our Freedoms in the Patriot Act

[snip]

The Fourth Amendment worked for 200 years to facilitate law enforcement and protect constitutional freedoms before Congress began to cut holes in it. Judges sit in every state in the Union 24/7 to hear probable cause applications for search warrants. There is simply no real demonstrable evidence that our American-value-driven-constitutional-privacy-protection-system is in need of such a radical change.

A self-written search warrant, even one called a national security letter, is the ultimate constitutional farce. What federal agents would not authorize themselves to seize whatever they wished? Why even bother with such a meaningless requirement? We might as well let the feds rummage through any office, basement, computer, or bedroom they choose. Who would trust government agents with this unfettered unreviewable power? The Framers did not. Why would government agents bother going to a judge with probable cause seeking a search warrant if they can simply write their own? Big Brother must have caught on because federal agents have written and executed self-written search warrants on over 120,000 unsuspecting Americans since October 2001.

Is this the society we want? Have we ultimately elected a government to spy on all of us? The Fourth Amendment is the lynchpin of our personal privacy and individual dignity. Without the Fourth Amendment’s protections, we will become another East Germany. The Congress must recognize this before it is too late.

[snip]