A new bill that borrows language from the PATRIOT Act promises to nab human traffickers using the same surveillance techniques that law introduced to catch terrorists and their associates.
We all know how that went: The PATRIOT Act's spying provisions-and other "War on Terror"-era crime measures-proved attractive to law enforcement far beyond their intended scope.
Wagner's bill-the deceptively named the "Empowering Financial Institutions to Fight Human Trafficking Act" of 2018-is the latest in a long line of assaults on civil liberties disguised as attacks on the biggest crime panic of the decade, sex trafficking.
Like other PATRIOT Act provisions-most notably, Section 215, which the Department of Justice interpreted to allow metadata collection on millions of innocent Americans-Section 314 turned out worse in effect than in theory.
"While other parts of the PATRIOT Act initially drew fire, Section 314 glided by, largely overlooked by everyone except the bankers," Jeff A. Taylor wrote here at Reason in 2004.
A 2016 bill to directly expand Section 314 of the Patriot Act was narrowly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Introduced on September 6, Wagner's new bill has already received a first vote by the House Committee on Financial Services and five co-sponsors, including two Democrats and three Republicans.
http://reason.com/blog/2018/09/24/house-to-vote-on-human-trafficking-bill
We all know how that went: The PATRIOT Act's spying provisions-and other "War on Terror"-era crime measures-proved attractive to law enforcement far beyond their intended scope.
Wagner's bill-the deceptively named the "Empowering Financial Institutions to Fight Human Trafficking Act" of 2018-is the latest in a long line of assaults on civil liberties disguised as attacks on the biggest crime panic of the decade, sex trafficking.
Like other PATRIOT Act provisions-most notably, Section 215, which the Department of Justice interpreted to allow metadata collection on millions of innocent Americans-Section 314 turned out worse in effect than in theory.
"While other parts of the PATRIOT Act initially drew fire, Section 314 glided by, largely overlooked by everyone except the bankers," Jeff A. Taylor wrote here at Reason in 2004.
A 2016 bill to directly expand Section 314 of the Patriot Act was narrowly defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Introduced on September 6, Wagner's new bill has already received a first vote by the House Committee on Financial Services and five co-sponsors, including two Democrats and three Republicans.
http://reason.com/blog/2018/09/24/house-to-vote-on-human-trafficking-bill
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