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

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