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

[shanen]

Oh yeah, I forgot the constructive suggestion part. A well-thought out Constitutional Amendment. Not bloody likely, is it?

The Senate should be reapportioned to reflect economic power. Let the corporations have their playground, but make it much weaker, except for negative delaying powers. That way the companies will have some place to focus all their lobbying money. At the same time, the House should be strengthened and held accountable and prevented from delegating their powers away. That's why they were supposed to face the voters every two years. Keep them on their toes.

And get the White House completely OUT of the budget business.

And the lesson in all this?

[The Master Control P]

Perhaps the weeks following a terrorist attack are not the best time to write legislation regarding what to do about terrorism.

But all the senators were panicking, and all their constituents were panicking demanding they do something, although they (the constituents) had no idea what. So no wonder that a bad piece of legislation gets written.

My solution to terrorism? Take the amount of money we've spent in Iraq and direct it towards fusion power research. Once fusion power is achieved, we don't need to prop up those regimes in the middle east any more. At last, we will be able to leave and flip them off on the way out. Then when the middle east is still a hellhole they can't blame us.

Re:Power only exists to be abused

[Shaper_pmp]

Two truly excellent and insightful posts, but one thought occurs:

"The Senate should be reapportioned to reflect economic power. Let the corporations have their playground"

So the US is institutionally corrupt[1], sliding towards political corporatism, and your solution is what, to give corporations an official seat at the table, and legitimise their actions from popularly-ignored corruption to official policy?

The mind boggles...

Surely the correct action is merely to drastically reform (and enforce) campaign finance regulations, crack down on (ideally, eliminate) pork, make professional lobbying illegal, increase financial transparency and mandate jail time[2] for any political figure found guilty of financial or procedural irregularity.

Sure, it's pretty radical, but you don't turn around the decline of an entire country with a few nice words and a pat on the back.

[1] What's lobbying, if not institutionalised corruption?

[2] We hold doctors to high professional standards, and they only hold one person's life in their hands at a time. Politicians hold the entire future of our society in their hands, and (with the right amount of cash and the old-boy network in place) they seem practically immune from prosecution.