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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.
They'll come up with some sort of emergency measure or other. Not a snowflake's chance in Hell this will die.
I think a Dixieland Jazz parade would be suitable.
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?
My weather app doesn't forcast Hell freezing over anytime soon, so I seriously doubt this is will be true. The politicians/government agencies all know a good thing when they see it. The Patriot Act gives them unfettered access to have huge budgets, grow bigger and add more departments, share information freely between unrelated agencies, spy on Americans all they want, collect data on everyone to use how they see fit, and all sorts of other goodness that big government types love.
The power hungry folks in Washington will never let this die.
If they don't pass it then the government will just do all those things anyway. It's not like they are subject to the law or the constitution or anything.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They were collecting data before the Patriot Act, they will collect it after. As technology allows they will collect more and more. They will lie to congress, the courts, and most certainly to the public. However this is all known to have ready been done with absolute certainty thanks to Snowden. It's a sign that they are getting bolder, more willing to act without even a shred of cover of law. They no longer need to pretend for permission due to the Patriot Act. Thus it can be allowed to expire.
for false flage operation if it is not renewed.
Good riddance.
I remember that when the Patriot Act was first passed thinking that
- this was obviously on someone's wet dream wish list (it was not so much written as released from the vaults) and
- passing huge changes in security laws with little debate and less thought in the near panicked initial response to a terrorist attack is basically a good definition of what not to do in a crisis.
Of course, that was before the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and showed us that purposeful stupidity can be worse than mindless stupidity.
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
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 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?)
this is all because of one man who did a brave thing and was forced to flee his country for a hostile nation. history books will write of snowden as a hero.
From all over the media, political commentators have been slamming Rand Paul since the 'filibuster'. Not just competitive republicans running for office or stumping for their guy either. Fox news left him off the latest poll, Scarboro (former republican analyst) mocks him, Bill Kristol (ancient neocon acolyte) mocks him. Several editorial columns describe his maneuvering of the vote for renewing the patriot act as betrayal. Huffpo implied Rand's 'act' is so tedious that other senators roll their eyes.
Amazing how this man is so derided for actually acting on one of the biggest issues of our time instead of just going along
"And then we said, sure, we'll turn off the Patriot Act! HAH! HA HAAAAAH!"
Because the alphabet soup will suddenly give a shit about what they're legally allowed to do and actually adhere to that?
There are no thermal gradients in hell. If there were, engineers could build a heat engine used to power an air conditioner.
If a terrorist truly wanted to harm us, the best way they could do it would be to mount a showy but essentially superficial attack some place Monday morning right after this expired.
The actual damage and injuries and deaths from the attack itself would probably be minuscule, but the self-inflicted damage and injuries and deaths caused by the U.S. doubling down on even tighter surveillance, more war on terror, and the loss of our freedoms that we say we're trying protect would gladden the hearts of many a terrorist. It is a strategy that has worked well for them since well before 9/11.
Terrorists can't destroy us directly, but they're happy to let us do it to ourselves voluntarily.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
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.
Cue in the false flag operations.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I must have missed where there were consequences for those 3 letter agencies breaking the law?
A single senator can filibuster a bill. Senator Rand Paul said he'd prevent it from passing before the Senate went on break, and he did so. Rand Paul is now saying he'll make sure it isn't passed on Sunday, and there's every reason to think he'll do so again, just like he did before.
I'll be considering him carefully when I choose my presidential vote.
Contact your Senators NOW and demand they let it die and anything else that has to do with spying on americans and the erosion of our rights and the constitution.
Do it now and then hand feed another person to do it right now. Hell I'll hand feed all of you.
https://www.sunsetthepatriotac...
Do it right now. Unless you hate freedom and america.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He'll never get the Republican nomination. Not a chance in hell. The old guard in the party would rather have Hillary Clinton than Rand Paul. She's less of a threat to them.
Hillary would be the best republican since Eisenhower.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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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.
Not at all. The GOP is dying for someone like her. As a republican, she would draw more votes than Reagan, even from the democrats. She's perfect. If I were to vote republican, I would vote for her in a heartbeat. I think the republicans should write her in during their primaries. Let's see if she shows up at the convention.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What a profoundly naive and ignorant idea.
Expire all laws? Like all federal criminal law against fraud, racketeering, drug trafficking, computer misuse, theft, and murder?
All the laws enabling agencies like the FDA, which keeps the food supply safe? Laws that regulate and maintain the highway system and regulate interstate commerce? Laws that establish the FDIC and keep confidence in banks?
Not to mention the huuuuge body of procedural law, which defines how the courts work, how the military is governed, etc?
The US Congress would not have time to reauthorize the entirety of federal law, much less write new law. The states wouldnt have the time to do this either.
Businesses would hate this because there would be so much uncertainty.