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Congress to Revisit the Patriot Act
BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet is reporting that both the House and Senate are planning to review the 16 portions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, several dealing with computer and Internet surveillance. They're trying to avoid the criticism they received after rushing this bill through in 2001 by holding hearings to review the bill's worth. FTA: 'One hearing disclosed police invoked the Patriot Act 108 times in a 22-month period when surreptitiously entering and searching a home or office without notifying the owner.'"
None of us can deny the fact they put an expiration date on this law. This feature was great forsight and will allow us to (more easily) modify or delete the Patriot Act.
So if the people really do hate the Patriot Act it will be known when it gets modified/deleted.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Thank you for posting this. Most people don't get past a knee jerk reaction and bother to look at what is really in Patriot beyond the FUD.
Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
~Z
I view this as mere huff & puff. Any items that are not renewed, or are softened, will reappear in the coming months or years as riders on "necessary" bills that will be approved unanimously. These "new" provisions will not have expiration dates, and will not be so widely discussed & lambasted in the public/mainstream media.
.. this is all due to be replace with the more concise:
Section 1.0 -- Government good, citizen bad.
Starsucks
Who are they trying to kid here? They pushed that Reael ID thing though last night and it was headlines on CNN and Fox News this morning. I'm not sure who said this, but I saw a saying that I think fits right in here:
"Only a Government afraid of its citizens tries to control them."
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Check the voting record, the democrats supported it by an overwhelming majority as well. This will not be a campaign issue for Republicans.
Max Cleland.
The Republicans destroyed that dude because he only went so far as to delay the passage of the Patriot Act originally. Cleland, due to losing 3 limbs in Vietnam(not due to heroics, but from dropping a grenade and trying to pick it up instead of kick it away, like you are trained to do) was considered untouchable and a lock for re-election to the Senate.
No one in Congress is going to become the next Max Cleland, just for your precious Civil Rights, so get used to it. Congress is made up of people who do nothing but protect themselves for their next election, and nothing, I repeat, NOTHING for you.
Most modern westerner politicians are so childish and have such stupid ways of setting their opinions it's quite scary they're the ones with the power...
And there are so damn few alternatives...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Interesting...full story can be found here.
Odd how just when the Patriot Act comes up for review, a small plane flying off course happens by to remind us all that we must FEAR and OBEY...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It's not clear from your post whether you mean that the upcoming review of the Patriot Act signals a change or whether something else leads you to think that. In any case, you're 180 degrees off target.
The Republicans are hoping to find someone who will continue after President Bush because he's coming to the end of his final term. Grass root Republican still like him. By and large the leadership is not ashamed of their post-9/11 decisions, despite all the revisionist finger pointing going on in Washington.
If anything, the leadership is looking for someone who is more dynamic and smooth, and able to carry off centrism - sort of a right-wing Bill Clinton. I don't think that kind of person would be a successful candidate for them, but that's what they want.
To your other point: before 9/11/2001, none of us thought for a minute that something like that could happen here. Terroism happened in Europe and the Middle East, not here. We were trained by a century of domestic peace and foreign wars to believe that our oceans and good character would protect us.
We were all in shock, and that includes those in government. Can you imagine feeling responsible for 9/11? You could tell yourself everything I just said above, but still there would be the self-doubt asking whether you should have planned better.
The Patriot Act needs tweaking, obviously, where it violates the Fourth Amendment. But a lot of what's in it - such as allowing domestic and overseas law enforcement to share notes - can help defend our liberty without infringing it.
sigs, as if you care.
"Most people don't get past a knee jerk reaction and bother to look at what is really in Patriot beyond the FUD."
And this is just the summary of items scheduled to be repealed automatically. Some of the items that are NOT in the "sunset" clause are equally onerous.
Like the combination of Sections 201 and 805 which creates a net so ridiculously broad that every self-claimed conservative American should be jumping all over it as the gateway to a potential police state.
But no, instead many of these "conservatives" bend over like sheep under the false shiny label of "patriotism".
To which I would remind them all of the following:
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison
The ACLU is on record AGAINST an individual's right to bear arms. They claim to support a "collective right" which means we can arm the national guard.
What? Me? Sig?
...is a happy citizen.
Congratulations on letting the B's of today turn your country into Oceania.
Thank you for posting this. Most people don't get past a knee jerk reaction and bother to look at what is really in Patriot beyond the FUD.
Man. We must be reading two different sets of provisions....because this shit makes my knees jerk all over the damn place. Roving wiretaps? Changing FISA so that they can have purposes other than foreign surveillence? Allowing secret searches of innocent third-parties, and threatening them with prison if they tell anyone?Are you fucking crazy!?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
A lot of arguments about the PATRIOT Act (which I do think desperately needs radical revision) are very light on facts.
A good example is the article here. "One hearing disclosed police invoked the Patriot Act 108 times in a 22-month period" would be a much more useful piece of information if we got a chance to see whether the cases in question did, in fact, involve terrorism.
I mean, if nearly all 108 of them regarded rifling through the files of nut-jobs planning on poisoning the NYC water supply or shutting down nuclear plant cooling systems in California, I would take that as compelling evidence that something very much like the PATRIOT Act (with a little tweaking to improve safeguards of personal rights) is probably a Good Thing to have in place.
On the other hand, if many of the cases were simply run-of-the-mill crime suspects, and law enforcement officers used PATRIOT clauses as a work-around to unconstitutionally search their premises, I would say it's time to riot in the streets.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When you consider that western countries enjoy a very high quality of life compared to other countries, its easy to make the argument that people live 'well enough' to not have to care about whether Foo or Bar is running the country.
From other vantage points, Kerry and Bush would basically do the same things, only with different ways of justifying it to their voter base. (Same here in Canada, etc.)
Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the system isn't currently broken; rather simply that not enough shit has hit the fan yet for people to be forced into caring.
Its the old adage where you don't really care why your neighbours are being arrested until they come for you. Same principle. Enough people are enjoying worry free lives (save for the material worry we create to substitute for real worries such as where is my next meal coming from) such that we just havn't hit a critical mass of folks who think we need a substantial change.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I recommend reading the actual sections since most of the "summaries" of the sections that I have seen are translations, usually leaning to one way or another.
Not pointing any fingers here, just recommending you read the actual text yourself. A lot of folks went ballistic over the massive new erosion of our rights when those rights were aleady in jeopardy if you were a drug dealer or traficker. They've simply extended the power they already to terrorism suspects.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
For instance, "terrorism" was recently extended to include a meth lab in Virginia. Bad? sure. Terrorism? not hardly. Prosecutors will use anything available - they're forced to do so.
I forget what 8 was for.
The "Patriot" Act has more to do with Despotism than Patriotism. Powers that the Act give are more in line what dictators would want than what a so called "free and democratic" society would strive for.
If law enforcement had really stopped 108 nefarious terrorist plots, you can be sure we would be hearing about it nonstop. Because that's the surest way for the government to silence its critics - point out the threat. In reality, they've had to invent fictitious threats, like Iraq's WMD.
But you're still missing the key point here - even if all 108 cases were suspected terrorists nutjobs, that still can't justify unconstitutional searches, because they're just suspected. There's nothing to stop you from becoming a "suspected" terrorist too.
Liberty cannot survive in a system where there are two classes of people: normal people with rights, and terrorists. Rights exist specifically to protect people accused to heinous things.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
I mean, if nearly all 108 of them regarded rifling through the files of nut-jobs planning on poisoning the NYC water supply or shutting down nuclear plant cooling systems in California, I would take that as compelling evidence that something very much like the PATRIOT Act (with a little tweaking to improve safeguards of personal rights) is probably a Good Thing to have in place.
.whom I've slept with."
.nothing.
There are a few relevant questions here.
First off, it isn't enough to know that all 108 were nutjobs. What was the relevance of the PATRIOT Act to their survielence? The answer might well be none, in which case the act only serves to remove civil liberties from the innocent while adding nothing to the legitimate investigation of criminal activity.
Another, and more troublesome question is, how do you know they were actually nutjobs if there has been no judicial review, no legal representation, no finding of fact and no trial? No public record whatsoever.
"Did all of these people turn out to be nutjobs?"
"Ummmm, Yeah, they did. That's the ticket. Just ask my wife, Morgan Fairchild. .
Is this not the very problem with secret "law enforcement" activity?
Remember that law enforcement itself is even responsible for defining what "suspicion" and "terrorist" activity are. Afghanistan makes heroin. You are "suspected" of selling heroin. Therefore you are suspected of being a terrorist.
See how easy it is?
And the last question is, what if the 109th person isn't a nutjob at all, it's you, what will you say?
And the answer to that is. .
KFG