Patriot II - proposes massive increase in US security and related powers.

It's a huge document: the 12.5 megabyte document takes an age to download even with fast broadband - and there were frequent droppings-out as the distributing servers had a hard time keeping up with demand over the weekend. Dial up users should not even try.

Within two weeks of the USA PATRIOT Act being passed there were strong rumours in Washington, reported by World Money Laundering Report in its London briefing to compliance officers at the beginning of November 2001, that there was new legislation "in the works" to address the shortcomings of the USAPA. The main surprise is that it has taken so long to surface, especially as the public goodwill which allowed strong measures to pass without protest has evaporated, in part by reason of the time passed and also because of the increasing resistance to attacks on Iraq.

The new law is a long way from being passed and its somewhat secretive preparation, and the publication of the draft by CPI did nothing to uncover the truth - the DoJ Press Office merely saying that many ideas are floated and many are discarded. The DoJ has not presented any final proposals for a draft Act and there is therefore nothing to be had by having a discussion. Except, of course, the fact that in the months since September 2001, the process of public consultation on such law has been at best superficial and Congress has had little if any opportunity to examine some of the laws presented to it.

There is, of course, considerable concern that the Act will be shoehorned through Congress in the manner of much of the legislation since 11 Sept. 2001. Radical reform of civil liberties and government departments have been swept through a battered legislature with little dissent.

The new provisions may not get such an easy passage: already there is considerable concern at the proposals to deport bad guys and even to declare outlaw and banish US citizens that are found to be in league with terrorist organisations.

And if that sounds medieval, it's because it is - there is a proposal at Section 501 - to infer that a person may, by his conduct, relinquish his citizenship and be ordered to have done so. In doing so, he would become stateless unless he has some alternative to rely on. According to the US immigration department, "Americans have a right under U.S. law to renounce their U.S. citizenship in a consulate abroad." That's a long way from being declared no longer American and then, in the absence of positive permission to remain, being regarded as illegally present in the USA.