Do you have the voting record of the senators and reps on this law?

In order to be guilty of the crime defined in the amended senate version, a person must damage or cause the loss of real or personal property or threaten somebody with bodily harm, with the intent of interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise. (The House version is not as specific, referring only to “property.”) In legalese, the actus reus (the guilty act) of the crime is damaging or causing the loss of property or threatening to harm someone. The punishment section, where the issue of “economic damage” comes up, is irrelevant unless you first commit the crime, i.e., damage property or threaten somebody.

The statute defines “economic damage” in the punishment section as including loss of profits, which by negative implication means that damaging or causing the loss of real or personal property (which is the criminal activity) is not merely causing a loss of profits- otherwise the statute would say “anyone who causes economic damage to an animal enterprise is guilty of a crime.” In other words, the actus reus would be “causing economic harm,” which it is not. Besides, lost profits (i.e., what they think the company would have made if its property hadn’t been damaged) cannot be personal property or property in the general sense because you cannot own something that exists only in theory (and lost profits obviously aren’t land-real property). In order to commit the crime, one has to do something active like break a door, set the animals free from a fur farm, burn a lab’s records, etc. (And people can nonetheless debate whether that is a legitimate way to work for animal rights.)

I don’t think that this amended statute expands the existing crime, in fact, it seems to me it makes it more clear that activities like protesting, boycotting, etc., that do not involve breaking something or threatening to hurt somebody, are not criminalized by the statute. What it does do is make the punishments harsher for people who do what is already illegal. While this is evidence of Congress giving a gift to big business most likely in return for campaign donations, I don’t see the AETA (as amended in the senate version) as the attack on the First Amendment that people have made it out to be. I think that by sounding the alarm bells in the manner I have witnessed, animal rights organizations might actually be making things worse in terms of “chilling” people’s willingness to speak out for animals.

Has the “danger” of eco- and animal rights- terrorism been overblown by the Bush Admin and the media and could the AETA been seen as Congress and big business acting to further nip away at the environmental and animal rights movements- sure. Is the FBI going to be arresting people who peacefully picket in front of a KFC and charging them with terrorism- not under this statute.