Significant FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act

Noksagt writes "The Washington Post is reporting that recently discovered documents indicate serious intelligence violations by the FBI. This comes just months after the U.S. House voted to extend the Patriot Act, EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act of thirteen cases of possible misconduct in intelligence investigations. The case numbering suggests that there were at least 153 investigations of misconduct at the FBI in 2003 alone."

Comments

Re:Power only exists to be abused

[Timo_UK]

> The American idea of dividing the powers up It's not an American idea. You guys might think you invented democracy, but the idea of 3 powers in a state came from the Greeks - about 3000 years ago.

Re:Power only exists to be abused

[TapeCutter]

England is where the modern idea of a constitutional democracy took root with the signing of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_carta. Interestingly, the English parliment was formed by a group of wealthy Barrons who forced the king to divest some of his power because he was screwing up their bussiness interests (seems aggressive lobbying is nothing new).

The parent post is however correct, the Greeks invented the basic "seperation of powers" concept, every other democracy since that time has simply tinkered with the details.