• It has been used more than 150 times to secretly search an individual’s home, with nearly 90% of those cases having had nothing to do with terrorism.
• It was used against Brandon Mayfield, an innocent Muslim American, to tap his phones, seize his property, copy his computer files, spy on his children, and take his DNA, all without his knowledge.
• It has been used to deny, on account of his political beliefs, the admission to the United States of a Swiss citizen and prominent Muslim Scholar to teach at Notre Dame University.
• It has been used to unconstitutionally coerce an Internet Service Provider to divulge information about e-mail activity and web surfing on its system, and then to gag that Provider from even disclosing the abuse to the public.
• Because of gag restrictions, we will never know how many times it has been used to obtain reading records from library and bookstores, but we do know that libraries have been solicited by the Department of Justice – voluntarily or under threat of the PATRIOT Act – for reader information on more than 200 occasions since September 11.
• It has been used to charge, detain and prosecute a Muslim student in Idaho for posting Internet website links to objectionable materials, even though the same links were available on the U.S. Government’s web site.
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