Slashdot Mirror
The Patriot Act May Be Dead For Good
HughPickens.com points out Shane Harris's report at The Daily Beast that when powerful spying authorities under the Patriot Act expire at the stroke of midnight Monday, as currently appears likely, they may never return. "Senators have been negotiating over whether to pass a House bill that would renew and tweak existing provisions in the long-controversial law, but if the sunset comes and the provisions are off the books, lawmakers in both chambers would be facing a vote to reinstate controversial surveillance authorities, which is an entirely different political calculation. ...
Three major Patriot provisions are on the chopping block: so-called roving wiretaps, which let the government monitor one person's multiple electronic devices; the "lone-wolf" provision, which allows surveillance of someone who's not connected to a known terrorist group; and Section 215, which, among other things, the government uses to collect the records of all landline phone calls in the United States." Obama has been urging Congress to pass the Freedom Act, but not warning that the sky will fall if they don't. That may reflect a calculation on the president's part that the surveillance authorities aren't important enough to lose political capital fighting to keep them. Meanwhile with the Senate not slated to return to Washington until just hours before that deadline, opponents like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) showing no signs of budging, and the House so far unwilling to bail out the upper chamber, the prospects for an eleventh-hour breakthrough look slim.
for false flage operation if it is not renewed.
First, get off your ass and call your critters and tell them to let it die.
Second, tell them to start supporting this...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/27/whistleblowers-back-surveillance-state-repeal-act/
Only Section 215 is expiring. The Patriot Act itself has long since been extended pretty much permanently.
Other parts of the Patriot Act, including the use of National Security Letters, still allow them to spy on anyone for any reason without a warrant. In fact, for the first few years after the Patriot Act was signed, the government didn't even invoke Section 215 to do this stuff because NSLs do the trick just as easy.
"... it looks like the Patriot Act will be gone by Monday morning."
Correction: key provisions of the Patriot Act. What most people call "the Patriot Act" was actually a collection of bills and laws, only some of which were part of the Patriot Act itself.
So yes, technically most if not all of the Patriot Act would expire... but there are other sibling laws that need to go down in flames, too, before the damage done will really be repaired.
If it fails, part of the failure can be attributed to John Oliver.
That guy has done more to clean up government in 2 years on HBO than most politicians do in a 2 decades in office.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.