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How has the USA PATRIOT Act Affected You?
wetdogjp asks: "October 26th, 2004 marked the third anniversary of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (or USA PATRIOT Act, as it is more commonly known). While the Slashdot crowd can certainly muster the enthusiasm to debate its pro's and con's, I'd like to know: How has the USA PATRIOT Act affected you, personally? How has it interfered with your personal and professional life? Has this act influenced your Presidential vote?"
How about it has not effected me one bit. Just like how it has not effected 99.9% of Americans.
I'm a Canadian that feels deeply disappointed that so many Americans can still vote for someone like Bush. Yikes!
Meh.
I have not been personally affected by the existance of the PATRIOT act as of yet.
However, in 5-10 years if the PATRIOT act is still around, I believe things will change greatly. Once the US stops chasing people around the globe these very convenient changes in rights and law will be used against everyone equally.
Not to mention: I doubt it's exactly fair to ask this question here, because anyone who actually *has* been affected by the PATRIOT act probably no longer finds themselves in a position where freedom of speech or the ability to access devices for global communication are available to them.
Completely robbed me of my faith in my country.
-Zeecog
As a Canadian, you would expect that it has NOT affected me. But in the light of recent news, I'm not so sure anymore. I'll get flamed for this, but why should your government Patriotism give them every right in MY country? Canadians are patriotic too, love they country, want to protect it, etc... did we ever invade USA citizens privacy like this? Sure, its to fight terrorism... but be careful not to damage your relations with your allies by doing so (if its not already done, with France and the Iraq war).
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Why would this affect my vote for president when both major candidates are in favor of the act?
It's made me aware of government intercepts in ISP's, so I've setup postfix, cyrus, courier and sendmail wherever I use them to use SSL whenever possible. I also finally bought a real cert (from InstantSSL for $50).
I suppose Carnivore and Echelon were there before Patriot but it didn't wake me up as much.
It bothers me personally and politically, yet there was no candidate I could vote for who was against Patriot and for Preemption. In the end, Patriot was lower on my scale. You could say I like my terrorism policy like my operating systems - preemptive rather than cooperative.
I'm firmly of the opinion that no matter what we do to try to protect the country there is a way around those measures. Short of locking everybody in their houses there are opportunities for terrorists to strike.
So we shouldn't step on _any_ civil liberties of Citizens and we should be on the offensive.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What are we supposed to do, wait until a few million people _are_ affected by bad laws before suggesting they are not in our best interests? That sort of thinking got us the War on Drugs and millions of citizens spending time in prison and law enforcement constantly expanding its scope to try to enforce fundamentally unenforcable laws. Most americans weren't affected by the Alien and Seditions Acts. Most americans in the north weren't affected by slavery laws. Most germans weren't affected by the Nuremburg laws. Just because it doesn't screw over >50% of the population in the first 3 years of its existence doesn't mean that it shouldn't be fought. Particularly when the law itself demands that any uses and abuses be kept hidden from the public.
Dyolf Knip
Except for that Oklahoma City bombing, of course.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The USAPATRIOT act may not have affected me in any material way, but it has affected me in some very serious ways, namely a loss of faith in some of the basic principles that make up my idea of what America IS.
By allowing expanded powers to the investigative branches of the government with only minimal oversight by the judicial branch, the act undermines my protections under the 4th amendment. Sneak-and-peak warrants have been allowed under the FISA and criminal statutes since the late 60's, with probable cause, and with bench approval.
Now, however, the standards have been lowered to a point that the average citizen can have their private records and personal affects searched (and bugged) for, what would have been in the past, only minimally suspicious behaviors. Imagine, for instance, that you are a student researching a paper for a comparative religion class that takes you into the realm of researching reasons, justifications, and methods used by suicide bombers/terrorists. With only the barest of oversight, the government now has the right to partake of surveillance that would have been considered "beyond the pale" only 3 years ago.
My biggest complaint, however, has nothing to do with the above. It has to do with the "Enemy Combatant" detainments that have been an ongoing problem in the judicial system. Under the 6th amendment, we have the right to a speedy and public trial. By right, we have for the last 200+ years enjoyed this protection under the bill of rights. Now, though, if the government can come up with a reason to label you an enemy combatant, they can hold you for an indefinite time in an undisclosed location, with no access to legal counsel.
At one point in the past, I was a Muslim. I frequented a mosque that I discovered (many years after the fact) was frequented by "unsavory" types that were recruiting people to fight in one of the earlier Palestinian Intifada's. Do I now have to forever look o'er my shoulder to see if I am being followed? Maybe.
Both of the above situations are also are protected by the 14th amendment (due process), but this due process has been undermined by the USA Patriot act.
How can we truly call ourselves the land of the free when we allow our constitutional freedoms to be circumvented by acts of congress?
== That terrible green-green grass, and violent blooms of flower dresses, and afternoons that make me sleepy.==
... and who doesn't live in the country:
The Patriot act has made me decide to never go to the US. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to see and do there, but I will never enter the US as long as Bush is in power and legislation like the DCMA and the Patriot Act are law.
/mike
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
As one poster pointed out, you wouldn't have caught Timothy McVeigh with your scheme.
You also wouldn't have caught the dude that burned all those churches in the South a few years back, nor any of the abortion-clinic bombers, nor would you have prevented the Columbine Massacre, not to mention the Kittamer Massacre.
Unfortunately, in the USA, we have cheapened citizenship so much that there is almost no difference in privileges and rights claimed by non-citizens and a citizens in the USA.
The declaration of independence sorta sets the stage. It is a legal document that declares our freedom from Britain. Personally, I'd like to see the Brits point out how we've failed to meet our promises in said Declaration, and that means ownership of the country reverts back to them. Wouldn't that be fun? Anyway, the Declaration of Independence says something about holding certain rights to be inalienable, and says *nothing* about "inalienable only for american citizens, but foreigners don't enjoy these rights in our land".
This country was built by immigrants. To treat foreigners like you would treat them is to spit on our own roots, and then, of course, we can never go home again.
Like what I said? You might like my music
This would be the same country that was built on slavery, that had racial segregation and which treated blacks as second class citizens until only a few decades ago, that still treats its indigenous peoples as worse than second class citizens in many aspects, that has clear sexual discrimination in the workplace (women still earn less than men), that has clear homophobic discrimination in government (gays in the military), that has a President that wants to discriminate further against gays (gay marriage), that has illegal internment of anyone with even partial Japanese heritage (during WWII) and McCarthyism (when freedom of expression went out the window) in its recent past and has now resorted to illegal internment and religious McCarthyism again.
Yeah, because nothing could ever be shown to have been held unfairly against anyone at anytime in America's recent history, could it?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There are three problems with the Patriot Act. The first is obviously a suspension of due process. Within 6 months of passing it, the Bush administration was boasting that it had been used to to prosecute drug dealers. This has nothing to do with terrorism, and showed the real intent: a law which could be used to suspend normal due process in the investigation and prosecution of anyone, not just terrorists.
Secondly, there is the invasion of privacy. I really could care less if anyone read all my email or searched my computer. There's nothing incriminating. But this lack of concern only applies if the intent is criminal investigation. Political persecution is another matter. The Patriot Act is a perfect cover for a fascistic Star Chamber. If a group within the intelligence community decided that only those with the proper political views should rise to prominent positions, the Patriot Act would give them the clout to find out who does or doesn't hold these views. The persecution part is easy--just call a prospective employer and drop hints about an investigation into your background and affiliation with criminal organizations. The Patriot Act makes the Thought Police a real possibility. This is why law enforcement was required to get permission and provide notification. It permits ordinary citizens to catch the scent of this kind of activity, permitting correction by civil and political action. A crucial part of the checks and balances of the American system has been disabled.
The third danger is high noise and low signal. If the intelligence community becomes involved in the unneccesary surveilance of innocent civilians, the time, expense, and manpower devoted to this is diverted from genuine threats. The end result is less security, not more. In one of the debates, John Kerry mentioned thousands of hourse of surveilance tapes that have never been watched. Who is going to watch all of this? This is noise. In Britain, where cameras have been installed everywhere, their main usage is to bust people for traffic violations. I suppose that if a terrorist attack does occur, they can look at the tapes later and say, "Oh, there go the terrorists."
What the intelligence community needs to do is focus, get people on the ground, and stop the political infighting that is clogging the system. That means that people in the intelligence community should check their political opinions at the door when they come in, and stop pulling stunts like outing CIA operatives for political gain. The draconian measure currently being used won't help either; if you know a guy who is innocent but might have a lead, you're a lot less likely to give his name if you think he might get shipped to Guantanamo Bay just because he might be a couple steps removed from suspicious characters. And finally, they would have to get rid of John Ashcroft, the incompetent git who lost an election to a dead guy, shut down the FBI people who informed him of the suspicious group of Arabs training in a flight school in Florida, and who has detained 6000 people without finding a single terrorist. As long as he's in place, nothing else will matter.
1) Personally: It offends my sense of civil-libertarian principle. The law leaves Americans less-free to go about their business unmolested by the hand of Big Brother. Restrictions on freedom should always be as few as reasonably possible, and the PATRIOT Act certainly doesn't qualify as a justifiable reasonable restriction on freedom in my book. It didn't 3 years ago, and it still does not.
2) Professionally: Having worked in the financial industry, the PATRIOT Act made my employer more-transparent to the govn't for terrorist-spotting purposes. This is a drain on our system resources and therefore, our productivity, and therefore, our efficiency, and therefore, our profits, and therefore, my income. So the PATRIOT Act has regulated away some (perhaps admittedly-small) amount of my income -- and for what?
Nothing except freedom-reduction and inefficiency, as far as I can tell.
Here's a better question: how many terrorists have we caught thanks *solely* to the PATRIOT Act? If we are to justify the law as useful for catching terrorists, then we had better *judge* it based on how many terrorists we catch -- NOT whether we have each been harmed by it. After all, a law that does nothing is a useless law wasting space on the shelves of law libraries across America, continuing to displace liberty in the name of security.
Indeed, true liberty is a lawyer's empty bookshelf.
And if the PATRIOT Act has been unsuccessful in catching terrorists, then the law has failed and we damn well had better repeal it for freedom's sake (and then proceed to find a better solution to the terrorist problem).
Look, just because the law hasn't affected somebody *yet* doesn't mean it *never* will. Take the tax cuts of the Reagan era -- it wasn't a week before Democrats were saying "OMG, it's not working!" But the process isn't that fast -- and in the end, the tax cuts worked.
So too will it be with the PATRIOT Act -- we may not have each been severely violated by it yet, but it is likely we will, sooner or later -- just like the DMCA. Therein lies the problem with the PATRIOT Act, the DMCA, the McCain-Feingold Act, or any other law: sooner or later, it comes back to bite you in the ass. But few people realize it until it's too late...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
You may not have noticed, but the USA Patriot Act passed 98-1 in the Senate, 356-66 in the House, meaning the vast majority of Democrats voted for it too. If you hate the Act, you can equally blame the Democrats for whatever ills it brings.
.. the States.
Because of PATRIOT Act, I have completely cut all involvement with America down to whatever interaction happens on the Internet with a few Americans I know, and a close circle of friends I occasionally stay in touch with and see when they travel the world.
I no longer work with Americans. I no longer travel to the U.S. for business. (trade shows &etc) I'm not taking any chances; the U.S. has become a techno-militaristic fascist state, and no longer represents to me, a member of the so-called "free world", the bastion of freedom and expression that it once did.
The U.S. is a Cop, and you don't hang with cops if you don't have to. And if you have to, you don't want to.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The most frustrating and scary part of the Libertarian party and/or people claiming to belong to it is their uncompromising stance on the hallowed "Free Market". A handy example is the belief that, left to its own devices, Microsoft wouldn't choose to crush the life out of any and all competition by fair play or foul. The fact that, at least publicly, the Libertarians admit to *no* exceptions either in theory or in practice is impossible to comprehend. The free market is a great theory but reality doesn't allow any theory to flourish unchanged. The idea that *all* problems stem from interference by government rather than from greed leaves me wary.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
Firstly, nice to see you using the Anonymous Coward option for what it was designed for: letting people freely spout whatever they want to free from persecution. Ironically, it's that sort of anonymity and protection of freedom of expression that the PATRIOT ACT essentially undermines.
Having said that, I do prefer it if people are willing to stand up and be counted when voicing a viewpoint that's diametrically opposed to my own. If nothing else, it makes it easier to track a conversation back and forth if I know which messages are being posted by which individual. Funny though, there are some out there that would say that standing up and being counted just makes it easier to weed out unwanted voices of dissent, as many a political prisoner throughout history could testify.
Secondly, it's nice to see you skim over those parts of my post that you don't feel like addressing, presumably because you have no way of rationalising away those forms of unfair discrimination and abuses of power.
Yeah, ignore the fact that a country theoretically built on the principle that "all men are created equal" was practically built with the blood, sweat and tears of a subjugated people. Ignore the fact that the Constitution valued the life of a negro slave as 3/5ths of a man, or that the freed slaves never did get their 40 acres and a mule in compensation.
Ignore the fact that, as recently as a couple of generations ago, blacks couldn't drink from the same water fountain as whites, that blacks had to give up their seats to whites, that blacks couldn't share the same classrooms as whites and that lynchings were a way of life.
Ignore the fact that as badly as black Americans have been treated, that native American peoples have been treated far worse, from the days of Plymouth Rock to Custer to today.
Ignore the fact that a woman doing the same job as a man who's equal to her in every other aspect other than their genders is likely to be earning less than her male counterpart, and is far less likely to be promoted than her male colleague.
Ignore the fact that being gay in the US military is akin to being unfit for service. As if a gay man is any less capable of firing a rifle, driving a tank or flying a plane.
Ignore the fact that the 43rd President of the United States would actively seek to take rights away from people based purely on their sexuality, even where those rights have been specifically granted to them by one or more of the States.
Ignore the fact that nothing more than a person's ethnicity has been used in the past to justify their imprisonment. Japanese Americans and others who spent most of World War II illegally imprisoned in internment camps clearly didn't have any rights.
Ignore the fact that a person's beliefs, however privately they may be held, have been reason enough to hound them unendlessly. Ignore the fact that McCarthyism ever existed and, to put it mildly, that it flew in the face of free speech.
Ignore the fact that post-September 11th, hundreds of Americans of Middle Eastern descent were interned without any legal representation or even access to their families whatsoever. And, whatever you do, ignore Camp X-Ray and everything that's gone on there.
Ignore the racial and religious McCarthyism that's going on right now, where people are routinely discriminated against because their skin is the wrong colour or because of their faith.
And above all, ignore any point that espouses a viewpoint that you disagree with.
I made a list in response to comments by someone who clearly didn't believe that innocents could be unfairly targetted in the US. I made a list to educate him that, unfortunately, innocents can and have been unfairly targetted in the US several times.
The land of the free isn't supposed to be the land of the free for most of the people, it's meant to be the land of the free for all of the people.
If you're so uncomfortable with a short list of examples of your country's failings then you really need to examine why it is you feel the need to defend the indefensible.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
They wanted my film. I used up the last shot on the roll just by taking a picture of the floor, and then I handed the film over.
The point is that my civil right were violated.
Not if you voluntarily gave over the film. If they asked for it and you refused and they took it anyway, then you would have a case.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
The problem of terrorism is due to almost exclusively people who are not American citizens.
...
The 'problem' with terrorism is in its definition. Who says what a terrorist is, and who says what a terrorist does? Find that person, and you have found someone who stands to profit from both sides of the terror coin.
Terror'-ism' is a pop-psych brain-trick designed to herd the masses towards a desired point of view. It is not a valid argument for civilization, nor is it a valid argument for war. To treat 'terrorism' as if it were a new problem, and not as old as the hills in which we build our cities, is to attempt to re-define it for political gain in the new language landscape presented by the modern American empire, and its media.
Any foolish 'patriot' who falls into the trap of believing that someone who does not 'hate terrorism' is an enemy of their land, has become a victim in point of fact of terrorist ideology
Terrorism is an ideology. Those who define that ideology are the true terrorists.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Of course, any positive effect that the P-ACT may have will in the long term be counteracted by the extreme seeds of hate that the Illegal War in Iraq is creating among Muslims (actually more than just the Muslims, pretty much everyone will hate us soon). In the long haul, this administration will make us LESS safe.