Congress Makes Deal To Renew Patriot Act For 4 Years

airfoobar writes "A four-year extension to the highly controversial Patriot Act is set to be rushed through in the coming week." Techdirt has its usual trenchant critique. I hope it's not unpatriotic to raise doubts about "one of the critical tools the intelligence community has to keep America safe."

Comments

Four More Years

[benjamindees]

Of Tyranny.

Re:Four More Years

[Ironchew]

At least we can count on both the Republicans and Democrats to stop their partisan bickering for a moment, and reach across the isle in solidarity to screw the American public over.

Re:Four More Years

[petsounds]

There's nothing wrong with optimism. Our country was founded on it (along with slavery and the genocide of natives). But you are placing your optimism in a failed party system, instead of individuals. The Democrats and Republicans have both had their chances to turn a new leaf and do the people's will, but their entrenched interests are set in a self-winding clockwork of greed, power, and obligation. When they act in the banner of "national interests", it is the interests of their campaign funders, partisan base, lobbyists, and future employers in which they act, not the interests of people at large who they supposedly represent.

Obama was a last chance for the Democrats. I think most of us not under the influence of corn syrup and reality shows wanted to believe that Obama was somehow an internal revolution in the Democratic party; someone to whom only the people he was accountable to. But then we saw the bank bailouts, the tacit approval of Bush/Cheney crimes, the defense of wiretapping and assassinations of US citizens, the abandonment of a promise to close Guantanamo, the frail response to the "Arab Spring" revolutions, and in those revolutions we saw ourselves. Except that we don't seem to yet have the unified anger against the systemic violations of liberties to rise up in any meaningful way. Not when people like yourself are still clinging to the ghost of Kennedy.

The only way we can move forward as a country, and avoid a kind of Romanic crumbling of our nation, is organizing around a third party. A third party that represents and addresses the people, not corporations. This is only possible if we leave behind the ridiculous social bickerings of abortion and religious contentions and unite as a wide swath of Americans against the entities and individuals controlling America. But maybe I'm just a dreamer.

Re:Four More Years

[shutdown -p now]

Come back to me when you're forced into a camp

The thing about camps is that it's kinda tricky to come back to you from one.

The more things change the more they stay the same

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're *lying*. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible."

- http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169254&cid=14107454

Re:When?

[Anonymous Coward]

It going to get extended forever.... Like Syrian "state of emergency", which was in place for over 20 years.OR Egypt, when it was active since 1967 - 44 years!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency#Egypt

So yes, "Patriot Act", 10 years and counting!!

Obligatory stat

[antifoidulus]

SUVs kill many more Americans every year than died in the September 11 attacks. And yet we are willing to sacrifice our freedoms to ostensibly prevent terror but are not willing or wanting to do anything to prevent those monstrosities from killing a massive number of innocent people every year.

Re:Obligatory stat

[element-o.p.]

Just shows you why you shouldn't trust statistics. 3443 is in exactly the same ballpark as the number of people who died on 9/11 (which I believe was your point). How many other people died in the U.S. in 2001 of terrorism? You might include the Anthrax victims, but that was just a handful of people (I don't have the exact number, and I'm honestly too lazy to look it up), but that number is trivial compared to the 9/11 death toll, so for all intents and purposes, we can call the number of people that died in 2001 of terrorism in the U.S. to be roughly 4,000.

So, if you want to consider a yearly sample, that's 3443 deaths in swimming pools to 4000 deaths due to terrorism...pretty much equal...makes me think that maybe we should pay roughly the same amount of attention to deaths in swimming pools as we do to terrorism.

But you argue that the death toll on 9/11 happened in a few hours. Okay, that's true. So somewhere on the order of 1,000 deaths per hour, then? Yes, many died in the initial four plane crashes, but the WTC didn't fall for a while longer -- call it four hours from the first impact (again, I don't remember the exact number, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but this is close enough to make my point). In swimming pools, that's (3443 deaths / year) * (1 year / 365 days) * (1 day / 24 hours) = 0.39 deaths per hour. Whoa! That means that terrorism is roughly 2500 times more common than deaths in swimming pools!!! Obviously, we need to spend much more time combating terror than we do combating deaths in swimming pools!

But wait...we can look at it another way, too. Since 9/11, we've had the Ft. Hood shootings and a several other attempts, but the numbers are essentially unchanged since 9/11; there have been no other terrorist attacks in the United States that caused even one order of magnitude less deaths than 9/11. By that metric, then, it's roughly 4000 deaths due to terrorism in the U.S. in TEN YEARS, meanwhile, roughly 3000 people per year are dieing in swimming pools. That means you are approximately nine times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a terrorist act in the U.S., and by that standard, GPP is correct: when compared to any other mundane risk we accept without thinking about it, the time, effort, money and liberty that we are throwing away fighting terrorism is absolutely absurd .

Re:When?

[Wyatt Earp]

Better, the National Security Act of 1947.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947 - that established the CIA and started giving legalized spying huge budgets.

I really must learn to write the Congress Critter.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate." -- Jefferson

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." -- Jefferson

Re:When?

[scotts13]

It going to get extended forever.... Like Syrian "state of emergency", which was in place for over 20 years.

Here in Pennsylvania, we still pay a special tax enacted to pay for repairs following the Johnstown flood in 1889. Once they get hold of power OR money, they never let go. Ever.

Re:When?

[Daetrin]

We haven't had a terrorist attack in this country since the law came into effect.

So if we do suffer another terrorist attack will they give up the Patriot Act as something that didn't work? Or will they demand more concessions? Are you suggesting that we can never regain lost rights, only lose more of them? (And i realize that that might be a political reality, but it seems like you may think that's the way it ought to be, which i disagree with.)

Sure they may be snooping your traffic but the law says they can so any claims you make about it being a violation of your constitutional rights are useless.

Uh, are you confused about your nomenclature, or are you actually unaware that a law can not circumvent a constitutional right? If i claim it's a violation of my constitutional rights and a lawyer can convince the Supreme Court that i'm correct, it doesn't matter how many laws have been passed about it. (Well, barring another Andrew Jackson of course.)

Re:Meet the New Boss

[interkin3tic]

He's not exactly the new boss. It's been years.

Anyway, how many voters outside the slashdot crowd are even aware the patriot act is still with us let alone oppose it? That doesn't excuse Obama or any of the Democrats, but it's never going to go away until more people start caring about it. Rather than bring up that saying year in year out, why not, oh, I don't know, do something to raise awareness about it?

I mean, I guess that doesn't get you slashdot karma...

Re:When?

[Bemopolis]

And now you know why those of us who opposed the PATRIOT act when it was initially proposed opposed it. And were called terrorist sympathizers by FOX News and the like on top of it.

Nothing dies slower than a bad idea.

patriotic acts

[epine]

In the unsurpassed words of Hermann Goering as cribbed from http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

That quote alone was worth winning the war, for which America was justifiably proud. Gosh it's hard to remember that far back.

All my life I struggled to identify myself on the liberal/conservative axis. It wasn't until I read Tibshirani and Hastings on PCA that I figured it out. The choice of principal component is often rather arbitrary when you have a cluster of aligned traits. In other words, the axis of ideology can be projected in many different ways, most of which are valid to the same approximate degree. When you subtract out whichever one you pick first, you've grabbed most of the explanatory power of the entire bundle.

One meme about conservatism is that it is more threat sensitive. I don't agree with that. Conservatism is more sensitive to threats from without. Liberals are more concerned from threats from within. In one case, you want to defeat the Nazis; in the other case your wish your own society not to become the Nazis by succumbing to the same Patriotic tendencies.

Re:Patriot Act Renewal

[hsjserver]

1. Pakistan is not, nor never will be up to bat. They have nukes, and that's a good deterant. The military there knows they need us as we need them. Our combat in Afghanistan and Iraq will end, though we'll probably have an influence there for quite some time (as we should, we broke it, we should fix it) 2. The increased use in food stamps is due to continued economic stagnation of the middle and lower class. The recession will end, the numbers will go down. Food stamps are useful for creating economic growth. For every $1 of food stamps creates ~$1.40 in economic growth while the economy is slouched. 3. What? No. China is manipulating their currency to keep exporters in their country happy, which is why they have out of control inflation. We need our dollar to lose some value in order to increase exports here, and restore jobs (the lack of which is the main reason for economic troubles here, not debt). 4. Our cities are crumbling, that's why we need a renewed investment in infrastructure. It creates jobs and has a stimulating effect on local economies. It will cost us, but it will cost us more if we don't. 5. I don't take anyone who can say "Congress is plotting with the centralized agricultural fascists to make it illegal to grow food." seriously. I would love to see some evidence of this, because there is none. As for blowing up levies? Which is harder to replace and costs more money? Farmland, or cities? It was a tough choice, but the answer is clearly cities. Commodity prices always go up, that's the cost of countries like China and India entering the first world, and freak weather damaging crop output in the Ukraine. Also, rationed health care? What? I didn't realize it was a scarce good, and for many Americans rationing would be an improvement, as they have zero health care now. You're a fucking clown pal.

Are you fsking insane?

[element-o.p.]

Your post is so full of holes and dubious logic, I don't even know where to start, but here goes anyway.

We haven't had a terrorist attack in this country since the law came into effect. I'm not saying correlation is causation...

We haven't had a Martian elected president since then either, but somehow I think the two are pretty well unrelated. However, even that counter-argument is giving you too much credit, because not only is your conclusion false, but your premise is false as well. Since the poorly-named PATRIOT Act went into effect, we have, in fact, had some well-known terrorist attempts (underwear bomber, the kid who wanted to blow up a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Portland, IIRC). The underwear bomber was thwarted because 1) his explosives didn't work and 2) the people on board the airplane beat the living crap out of him (which, I believe is a far, far better way to handle terrorist attacks than giving power to unchecked government bureaucracies). The Christmas Tree kid was just flat-out stupid.

...but I think claims that the law hasn't prevented at least one American death pretty dubious.

So what? I think that the FBI and local police forces are probably more than capable of detecting and catching would-be terrorists without subverting the Bill of Rights, and I think that I'd rather run the risk of the 1 in 20-30 million chance of dieing in a terrorist act than run the risk^Wcertainty that a government not bound by the law WILL eventually abuse its own populace. It's happened throughout history; it can happen here, too.

They don't need a new 'excuse' because it's not being used to monitor the porn you're downloading and I assure you the Government has bigger fish to fry.

I'll ignore the assumption that everyone on-line is downloading porn 24x7, since we all know what they say about assumptions. However, given that most people have things they would like kept private, even if it has nothing to do with sexual fetishes, and given that a Google search will turn easily turn up many, many news stories of LEO's using public records for personal gain (IIRC, there was a story here in Anchorage a few years back of LEO's using their access to criminal records databases to dig for dirt on political candidates), your "assurances" really aren't worth squat. The moment you become "interesting" for one of any number of reasons, you suddenly become that big fish that "government" wants to fry.

Sure they may be snooping your traffic but the law says they can so any claims you make about it being a violation of your constitutional rights are useless.

Even by /. standards, that's an incredibly inane position to take. You do realize that the "constitutional rights" you so easily dismiss ARE the law, don't you? Congress can pass whatever law it wants, and the President can sign the bill, but if it violates the Constitution, IT AIN'T LEGAL! Right now, we're basically just waiting for some of the laws to be challenged in court, and GWB did a pretty good job of making that a difficult proposition by dragging people who might have had a case to overthrow the PATRIOT Act off to Guantanamo and denying them their day in court. While I'm no fan of Obama either, he at least starting putting some of these alleged terrorists on trial.

If your post is any indication of how blase and naive the American public has become, it's no wonder our country is so effed-up.

Re:When?

[shutdown -p now]

Because the Supreme Court says you didn't, and they, not you, determine that answer.

Back in the day, the Supreme Court said that slavery is perfectly constitutional, since slaves don't count as "persons" (and thus don't have rights).

Just because SCOTUS says black and white, war is peace, and freedom is slavery, doesn't make it so. They're just people, as corruptible as anyone else, and with their own personal agendas.