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.

Comments

so what about all the *other* stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

the government uses to collect the records of all landline phone calls in the United States

I haven't been following this super close, but I gotta question. The above sounds swell and all, but we've seen this massive barrage of info from Snowden/Greenwald about other things they've been doing. Subverting encryption standards. Getting malware onto hard disk BIOSs. Collecting the contents of communications, not just just the so called metadata. It goes on and on and on.

Does ALL that stuff die? Or is this - as I am going to go out on a limb here and guess is the case - just reshuffling the status quo a bit to make it appear that "something is being done", without reeling back the majority of this surveillance state that we've seen come to fruition?

Re:so what about all the *other* stuff?

[Sun]

No. It does not all die.

First, please remember that the NSA is a spy agency. So long that their targets are legitimate (more on that in a second), they are expected to do everything within their powers to get to it.

Subverting the standards was a low blow, but as the ol' Tennessee saying goes "fool me once.... shame on... you?". Of course, by the time those standards were drafted, the standards body should have already known better (selling Enigma based encryption devices to foreign countries well into the 70's, anyone?). I'm hopeful, however, that we'll get spared "third time a fool".

As for the other activities, well, this is how spying gets done. That is how you spy on people in this day and age. With all of the justified criticism of the NSA, it would still be bad if they couldn't spy at all. They do, in fact, have a function to fulfill, and it is a function that needs fulfilling.

Circling back to who the targets should be. Spying against friendly foreign country leaders is not against the the law, or even, as far as I understand it, against the NSA's charter. It is an extremely foolish thing to do, but I don't think changing the law is the way to handle it.

Shachar

Well said

[don_combatant]

This is one of the best comments I've seen about the Patriot act (from the NY Times): 'Listening to the arguments for keeping the "Patriot Act" on the PBS News Hour tonight, they sound just like the same kind of arguments used by the NKVD, and the Gestapo, everyone needs watching to keep the American people safe. They are protecting us from subversives, terrorists, those who would threaten our society. The same arguments used by dictators and tyrants for all history. Just the term "Patriot Act" ("a person who loves and strongly supports or fights for his or her country") was coined to give the idea that anyone against it was not loyal to the country, and were a threat to the rest of the citizenry. It is also used to demean anyone who criticizes the government for actions such as going to war, to "protect Americans." There is nothing patriotic about the act, it is an act of repression, it is a scare tactic, made by people who have a strong desire to stay in power and make others behave withing their ideological framework. It is a means to keep watch on all of us, not just the miscreants. We got by for 239 years without it, we don ot need it now.' --David Underwood, Citrus Heights

Moving to the private sector

[Laxator2]

It does not mean that the spying will stop.
Only that it will be moved to the private sector.

In place of the NSA, it will be Verizon, Comcast et al who will be doing the bulk data collection.

And instead of being financed by tax money that is collected anyway, the bulk collection will be financed by additional charges to the phone/cable bills.

President Obama clearly knows how to kill a bill.

[Hasaf]

President Obama clearly knows how to kill a bill that he wants dead. All he needs to do is some out in favor of it and it is going to be DOA.

If he had fought hard against the reinstatement of the Patriot Act it would pass with a veto-proof majority.

  (In his book even former President Bush said The Patriot Act was poorly named. He felt, in recollection, that by naming it such, it made it hard for there to be meaningful discussion. . . after all, who wants to go on record as opposing patriotism?)

Re:snowden ftw

[serviscope_minor]

Indeed, while he seems often villified, it was him who showed the US that the spying was happening. It it looking like his legacy is having some serious positive consequences, in real terms. And he's risked his life and will probably have to spend his life in exile. But he did it for the good of his country.

A true patriot and a true hero.

Yes and no

[rsilvergun]

parts of the patriot act were used to coordinate the response to Occupy Wallstreet. Without the law what was done to shut the movement down wouldn't have been legal and we might have a very different political landscape.

that's the R party fight, libertarian or establish

[raymorris]

I can certainly see why he runs as a Republican- the current fight is between the libertarian side of the party and the remnants of the Moral Majority faction and the establishment power base. The unfortunate fact is that libertarian party candidates don't get elected to the presidency and the senate, republicans do. He therefore can accomplish a lot more by getting elected as a Republican than he could by losing a Libertarian. President Reagan largely redefined the republican party in his own image, so there's no reason Rand Paul couldn't do the same.

Of course Reagan also developed an alliance with the Moral Majority crowd in order to get elected, and that alliance affected the party platform. Moral Majority officially shut down many years ago and people are fed up with the establishment power base, so the party is ripe to be redefined again.