US PATRIOT Act

[ShiftingGears]

Whats so patriotic about it? :p :

[Mark in Oshawa]

Thugsquirrel, Where your question comes from is perplexing, they have killed it for the most part in the US. To harp on something that is dead is strange.

It seemed like a good idea at the time I suppose is the excuse many have...



I just know that if the US got hit today by another attack, the chorus of voices denouncing letting the provisions of it go will be loud.

[ShiftingGears]

Thugsquirrel, Where your question comes from is perplexing, they have killed it for the most part in the US. To harp on something that is dead is strange.

They have? Thats the first I've heard about it... can I have a link to prove that? Ta.

[L5->R5/CR]

They have? Thats the first I've heard about it... can I have a link to prove that? Ta.



The law is still on the books for the most part but a lot of the provisos it allows the government have been defeated in court. Therefore, while it is still on the books, it has been gutted. Not sure how the Aussie system works but in the US legal precedent and general practice is as important if not more so than what is actually on the books.

[Mark in Oshawa]

If anyone wants to really understand what the Patriot Act was or is, they should contact the US Gov. for a copy. I do know from what I have heard from political commentators of both stripes is that it was designed to be used to use domestic agencies in ways previously forbidden to do some domestic wire taps and spying on suspects of terrorist activity. It was/is controversial because this is something we in free societies resist with great reason as a rule. Therefore, it had lots of sunset clauses on its powers, in that they were temporary in one or two year lengths.

If Congress didn't renew the sunset provisions, then the powers to do what was prescribed in each clause were now illegal again. This includes much of the email monitoring, and the phone tap monitoring. If anyone said a key word or mentioned it in an email (say bomb, or wire transfer), then the conversation would be saved and monitored. Big brother? Yup...you bet. The Patriot act was a slippery slope, hence the controversay, hence the reason for constant debate by the politicians involved.

However, in the act, were many VERY good ideas that should be kept, and maybe will be. Before 9/11, the FBI couldn't talk to the NSA, CIA or co-ordinate with either. This is called "stovepiping". All the intelligence on a possible problem goes to the Executive Branch (The President/National Secuity Advisor/Secrertary of Defense). This is a good thing if there are no serious threats, or the bureaucracy at the top can put all the pieces of the puzzle together in time. However, when a bunch of people being watched by the FBI cannot talk to CIA and find out if they have any intelliengence on who the people in question are talking to overseas, then there is a problem. You have the FBI getting half the picture, you have the CIA with the other half, and neither realizes what intelligence they are looking at will mean or the significance of it until the first planes hit the building on 9/11/01. Even then, it took weeks to see how the pieces were fitting together. Then everyone blamed Bush later.....

Here is the dirty little secret though. This stopping of communications interagency except through the Executive Branch which creates the intelliengence failures was because Bill Clinton didnt' want the FBI and CIA talking to each other. I don't think he had a reason for this other than the fact the Democratic party has of late not had a lot of time for either agency, and didn't want their powers to be unchecked. The problem is, the bureaucratic overseers of all this intelligence cannot understand what all of it means, and handcuffing those who do know how to assemble it is lunacy in the face of the threat Al Quaida was becoming in the 90's. The CIA gets enough wrong without not letting them talk to the FBI about things THEY are seeing in country.

So the Patriot act in a roundabout way was to be the super solution to all of this, to stop another 911. The loss of freedoms in privacy was NOT as great as some would have you believe, but yes, they were not to be abused. That is why the act was to be reviewed through the sunset clauses on a yearly basis. This was also what the big "Bush is spying on us" kerfuffle was about as well. Bush didn't read the damn emails, but he had the NSA monitoring some domestic emails. The irony is the NSA is so good at just sucking up massive amounts of information, they get too much to process......