In October of 2004, John Ashcroft published an article called
The Patriot Act: Wise Beyond its Years. The article was a defense of the Patriot Act and a retrospective of the first three years of its use by law enforcement. One of the salient points that Ashcroft made in the piece was that the Patriot Act had applications in other facets of criminal law, apart from its use in terrorism cases. In particular, he cited the usefulness of the Act in sexual abuse cases involving children.
Wrote Ashcroft:
The Patriot Act has proved its usefulness beyond the war on terrorism in protecting our most vulnerable citizens from harm.
In pedophile and kidnapping investigations, for example, a delay can literally mean the difference between life and death for a child. For years, investigators could subpoena some information from Internet service providers. But filing subpoenas to get information quickly to identify and locate a suspect could cost life-saving time.
Section 210 of the Patriot Act changed that. In Operation Hamlet, sexual predators were using the Internet to exchange photos and videotapes of children being sexually abused. Sometimes the abusers molested children while running a live feed via a Web cam; this allowed other child sexual abusers to watch in real-time online. Investigators used the Patriot Act to quickly obtain subpoenas for information from Internet service providers. The sexual predators were identified, and 19 were convicted. More than 100 children were spared further harm.
One of the things that Section 210 does is provide law enforcement with the ability to gather very detailed information about the electronic communications of criminal suspects with their victims. Prior to the enactment of the Patriot Act in 2001, law enforcement could use subpoenas to obtain only very limited information about the communications of criminal suspects, such names, addresses, internet service billing records, and the like. But EPIC has reported that:
Section 210 expands the type of information that a provider must disclose to law enforcement to include, among other things, records of session times and duration; any temporarily assigned network address; and any means or source of payment. This heightened authority to use subpoenas (rather than court orders) for a broader (and more revealing) class of information is not be limited to investigations of suspected terrorist activity.
In other words, by appropriately using the Patriot Act, the FBI has in its possession the means to fully investigate Mark Foley's email and IM communications. The FBI should easily be abele to determine whether the messages that ABC News has provided to them are genuine or not. And they should be able to determine quite easily what jurisdiction Foley was in when he generated the messages, what jurisdiction the pages were in when they received them, and the FBI should be able to recover the content of many of these messages. The question is, will they do it?
Recently we have learned that the FBI had been investigating Representative Mark Foley's email contacts with congressional pages in July of 2006:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said yesterday that they received copies of the Louisiana e-mails on July 21 and turned them over to the FBI the same day. Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, said she spoke with a special agent in the Washington field office, and she questioned yesterday why the FBI did not investigate Foley weeks ago.
An FBI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the field office concluded that the e-mails "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." The bureau announced Sunday that it would begin a preliminary investigation into Foley's more explicit electronic exchanges with teenagers.
According to the FBI, they were not given very many of Foley's messages in July, and the contents of the messages that they were given did not indicate any illegal activity. However, upon learning that more numerous and explicit IMs existed, the FBI reopened the case on Sunday. This is their story, and they're stickin' to it! Could they simply be dragging their feet and be cooperating in a Republican led cover-up? Given the fact that the FBI has the ability under the Patriot Act to thoroughly investigate Foley's emails and IMs, one has to conclude that they already have a fairly complete picture of Foley's online activies.
And what is at stake for Mr. Foley should the FBI get up off its duff and begin a vigorous investigation using the tools provided by the Patriot Act? One of the IMs discovered by ABC news indicate that Mr. Foley possibly had a rendezvous with one of the pages in San Diego. If this happened, and if Foley engaged in sex with a minor, he violated Section 2423 of the U.S. Code:
§ 2423. Transportation of minors
(a) Transportation With Intent To Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity.-- A person who knowingly transports an individual who has not attained the age of 18 years in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any commonwealth, territory or possession of the United States, with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 5 years and not more than 30 years.
(b) Travel With Intent To Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct.-- A person who travels in interstate commerce or travels into the United States, or a United States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.
In addition, if Mr. Foley has been inducing minors to travel to him for the purposes of illegal sexual activity, for example by providing airline tickets or other gifts, he would have violated
Section 2422 of the U.S. Code:
§ 2422. Coercion and enticement
(a) Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, to engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
(b) Whoever, using the mail or any facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 5 years and not more than 30 years.
Incidentally, Mark Foley voted for the Patriot Act in October of 2001.