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House Limits Patriot Act Rules on Library Records
xerid writes "From CNN.COM: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Wednesday to block the FBI and the Justice Department from using the Patriot Act to search library and book store records. Despite a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 238-187 to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.""
but they should man up and throw the whole damn thing out
Thank you!!!!!
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Well, it's a start. How about we require a warrant for EVERY goddamned search so that the RIGHT of the people to be secure in their homes, papers and posessions is not abridged? It's only in the freaking Constitution for Christ's sake. At the very least they should eliminate the sneaky trick that they don't even have to TELL you you're a target of an investigation. When will these bozos realize that terrorists are CRIMINALS, not "foreign combatants" who need to be locked up without any rights at all in some gulag for years under military supervision? If this goes on much longer it will be a simple matter to apply the "T" label to anyone for any reason at all under the strictest secrecy possible and they won't even have to tell you about it until it's too late.
What the Patriot Act ought to do is act as a signal that something has gone dreadfully wrong in the American system--and therefore must be changed. For one thing, the fact that so many Americans did not oppose it, and were so easily led into accepting a complete contravention of the constitution through a manipulation of irrational fear (what if the terrorists attack my house??) shows us that there is a deeper problem in American culture. No kind of democracy can really work if people are that uncritical and deferential.
... and again.
Removing the Patriot Act is going to be incredibly difficult. Any process that does so, whether it is gradual or sudden, is going to first require a change in the whole political and cultural atmosphere, because there are so many people who genuinely believe measures like the Patriot Act are rational. So anything that removes the Patriot Act is going to do more than just remove the Patriot Act (it's not going to just be scrapped by a Democratic administration)
Whether you do it gradually or suddenly, if the Patriot Act were to be removed by representatives with little cultural change happening, then the deeper causal problems would still be there. But I think we can just as effectively remove it suddenly as we can slowly, if that process is carried out by just that--'We'. Because you're right--until the underlying factors are addressed, there is always the danger of this happening again
But I'm not sure how much that has to do with the *speed* of removing it.
Considering all of the provisions that are in this, and how extremely overbroad almost every single one of them is and unneeded most of them are, that the only thing congress finds fault with is the library and bookstore provisions is quite disturbing.
I think we need to clean house. The white house, and both houses of congress.
Electronic communications provisions would have ranked a lot higher for me, as well as banking & financial provisions, and detention provisions, ability to issue "secret" warrants, sneak and peak... All of those ranked a lot above worrying about my library card book list.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
And with that, the Patriot Act II will pass with flying colors.
Sort of like globalization, the overwhelming majority of people who get their panties in a bunch about how evil the Patriot Act is really don't have a bloody clue about what the Patriot Act actually does. The 'Library Statute,' while hardly ever used, happens to be one of the most easily lambasted portions of the legislation because the academics and intellectuals on the left hold libraries to be sacred places of privacy.
The fact of the matter is, the Patriot act was hardly ever used to collect library records and the Patriot act supporters know it. Any prospective terrorist is far better served by looking up public records and using the internet. Seriously, if you are a well financed terrorist who poses an actual threat to this country, would you have EVER gone to the library?
By removing the Library bit from the Patriot act, Congress can look like they actually care while still allowing the meat of the Patriot act to be renewed, if not even adding a bit more to it.
If that is a really scare for you answer this question.
Why are you not upset that some government agency(library) or some private agency(bookstore) is recording your purchases, keeping them linked to your information, and not destroying them after they have ensure you have returned the book or your payment has been approved?
There is no library section of the US PATRIOT act there is only an area that allows the FBI to request from a business records under certain circumstations and only after approved by a judge, and that was an extention of when the same thing could be done with the same records, just not under thoses circumstances.
Not that it matters anyway. The whole system of the 'Executive Order' renders the entire U.S. system of democratic government null & void should the administration ever decide to act on those powers. The patriot act just a bit of warming water, (as in the boiling frog analogy), and arguing over it is redundant when Bush, or any president, can legally become dictator for life at any time.
The U.S. system needs some purging and major restructuring if it can be taken seriously. Right now the whole thing is a big, stupid distraction to keep people occupied for years on end while the real game goes down, as it currently is.
-FL
I'm not saying I like the Patriot Act, but I really think that we should be rational in our removal of this disturbance, as we weren't rational with our creation of it in the first place.
I strongly disagree! For three reasons:
1. Although enacted as an irrational response to terrorist threat, it has not been used to bring down one terrorist since enacted.
2. Despite all sorts of assurances while the bill was being discussed, the PA has been used against drug dealers, tax evaders and even the wayward Democratic members of the Texas legislature. This is not a "terrorist" bill; it is a bill that has been used almost exclusively against American citizens!
3. Now that Congress has actually grown a spine and won't be threatened with being unpatriotic to cram anything through, it is time to send a clear message to Bush et al that the Bill of Rights is more than just toilet paper!
"we are setting ourselves up to the whole situation again"
Baloney.
There have been no convictions of terrorist because of this law.
None.
Zero.
The Washingtonpost just had a fascinating article about this last week. Despite all the crap that comes out of the administration, this law has had zero effect on terrorism.
It has been used extensively against U.S. citizens. However, if we need specific laws, lets enact them and stop pretending everything is about "terrorism".
Its bullshit and its just a way to remove all of our civil rights because government hates admitting that they are the employee of the citizens.
And so we get: September 16, 2003: John Ashcroft accused librarians of fueling "baseless hysteria," and of having been "duped" by liberals. "Ashcroft mocked and condemned the ALA and other Justice Department critics for believing that the FBI wants to know 'how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel.'"
Gee, how does The National Review feel about this? It advocates explicitly adding libraries to the list of organizations subject to the law, justifying that by listing the libraries the 9/11 hijackers used in Germany... I'm having trouble making out the argument there. It's pretty breathless: "Atta used computers at the public library and worked out at a Delray Beach health club." Health clubs are scaaaary! It too belittles librarians' concerns, of course:
Google this one up and you'll come across a motherload of library organizations who are very seriously tackling the issues of intellectual freedom involved in this law. Dismissing those librarians as hysterical dupes of terrorists is not exactly calling them pinko commie fellow travelers... but we're already on our way. When does someone use the senior Bush's "card carrying" epithet?
Do another Google and you'll be able to easily find stuff like "The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries." Book number 4 on the list: The Kinsey Report, because it tried to "normalize deviant behaviors." Yep, those Patriot Act supporters are true believers in intellectual freedoms... They'd never abuse surveillance powers, no ma'am.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The first thing that needs to be done is to pass a law preventing bills or acts from being given acronyms, or at least misleading ones.
I think most supporters of the act would mainly support it solely because it is titled the "PATRIOT" Act.
If it were called the SUPPRESSION Act, it wouldn't have had anywhere near as much support, because legislators would have been more inclined to read it before passing it.
I'm gonna need a spec.
All I can say to that person, who imo is a very sad individual that hasn't read the constitution, is read the first 10 amendments to the constitution if you want to know what rights you have.
This is something that keeps coming up, and I have to keep emphasizing the wrongness of it because it is the root of all of the problems with our government today.
"You", a citizen, have the right to do anything not expressly prohibited to you. "They", the government, have no rights, only certain powers expressly granted to them.
The Bill of Rights is a list of SPECIALLY PROTECTED rights, which the government expressly may not create laws infringing upon, if they somehow (*cough*Article 8, Section 18*cough*) find a way to go about expanding their own powers at will. But the Bill of Rights is NOT a list of your total rights, and many of the founding fathers were opposed to its inclusion (hence why it was added afterward), because they feared that people would think that, since some rights were enumerated, that was an encompassing list of all rights. The compromise was the 10th Amendment, which is the clearest bit of language in the constitution that hammers home my point:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In other words, if the federal constitution doesn't say No, and your state constitution doesn't say No, then you can do it. It's your right unless otherwise stated.
The (Federal) government, on the other hand, is supposed to have a very select set of powers, explicitly enumerated in Article 8 of the Constitution. The catch there is, the last clause of Article 8 grants Congress the power...
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
So basically, every law Congress has passed, aside from Constitutional amendments, is supposed to trace back in some way shape or form to the enforcement of one of these powers explicitly granted to Congress, or to help the other branches to exercise their (also explicitly enumerated and limited) powers.
And the lawmakers have really stretched things. The one you see abused most often is the "interstate commerce" clause. Drug control laws, for example, derive entirely from that - nevermind that the same laws are applied if someone produces a drug like pot entirely in their back yard and uses it it all by themselves, never involving other states or even other people in the process. The lawbooks are full of stretches like that - some law links back to the supposed enforcement of an apparently unrelated power of Congress, and then applies equally well in situations unrelated to the exercise of that specific power, effectively growing the powers of the Federal government.
And since such Article 8 abuses supersede the 10th Amendment protections of your universal human rights (because such abuses 'legitimately' grant Congress further powers, as far as the 10th Amendment is concerned), it seems they can get away with it.
The system is broken.
(Not to mention, even if it weren't broken in just this way... the Constitution still allows individual states to wield whatever powers they please except these, and a few others added in later amendments. Even if the feds weren't able to be draconian... chances are the states still would).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."