Browsing Posts tagged Patriot Act
Senator Rand Paul spoke last night on the Senate floor and introduced the Leahy-Paul Amendment [pdf warning] that would force the expiration of the National Security Letters on December 31, 2013. Senator Paul also introduced eight amendments and attempted to filibuster the vote.
Read the rest of my article at The Daily Censored.
Did you know that there is a secret Patriot Act? Senator Ron Wyden says that the way you understand the way the Patriot Act is wrong. The Patriot Act is being abused in order for the government to gain more power over its citizens.
Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.
Senator Wyden says he is concerned about the way in which the Patriot Act is being interpreted.
That’s why Wyden and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall offered an amendment on Tuesday to the Patriot Act reauthorization.
The amendment, first reported by Marcy Wheeler, blasts the administration for “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes.” It would compel the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.” And, intriguingly, it refers to “intelligence-collection authorities” embedded in the Patriot Act that the administration briefed the Senate about in February.
The FBI deferred comment on any secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to the Justice Department. The Justice Department said it wouldn’t have any comment beyond a bit of March congressional testimony from its top national security official, Todd Hinnen, who presented the type of material collected as far more individualized and specific: “driver’s license records, hotel records, car-rental records, apartment-leasing records, credit card records, and the like.”
But that’s not what Udall sees. He warned in a Tuesday statement about the government’s “unfettered” access to bulk citizen data, like “a cellphone company’s phone records.” In a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Udall urged Congress to restrict the Patriot Act’s business-records seizures to “terrorism investigations” — something the ostensible counterterrorism measure has never required in its nearly 10-year existence.
These interpretations are based on Section 215 of the Patriot Act known as the sensitive collections program. The Department of Justice has, essentially, reinterpreted Section 215 to make it mean what they want, which is inconsistent with the law and has been abused many times in the past several years. Although the senators cannot legally explain exactly what is being reinterpreted, there is enough of a concern that they have felt the need to speak out and introduce amendments to the Act. If American citizens are not privy to how the law is being interpreted, then how can they understand exactly what the law is? If they cannot know what the law is, then how will they be able to actually follow the law as it would then be allowed to be changed at the whim of whomever is currently interpreting it?
After reading this article and the coverage from Wired, a letter needs to be sent to Congress and the President formally requesting the repeal the Patriot Act. It’s time the Bill of Rights was reinstated and followed. If more people do not speak out and protest, the careful system of checks and balances will continue to be gutted until only one branch has all the power, while the other two become relics of a bygone system of justice.
Though many believe the death of Osama bin Laden was a good thing, once the fervor of jubilation ends, it will become clear that the United States may have just made things much, much worse. The US is set to face stricter restrictions on freedom of movement now that bin Laden is dead.
News reports have begun commenting on the latest threats that were found to be in the planning stages at bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Many Americans have been fighting against the increase in TSA presence in the nation’s train and bus stations. With the new found documents, there is now an excuse to raise security around train, bus, and subway stations. Around the world, travelers are being warned to remain vigilant of forthcoming attacks.
Again, the follow-through is shoddy. With over 400 subway stations in New York City, many with multiple entrances, you are never going to truly stop a terrorist with random searches. If you refuse to be searched, you leave the station and walk down to the next one or you walk outside, enter from another corner and continue on your way.
View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.
The DHS has also announced that the TSA would start conducting pat downs at shopping malls, churches, sporting events, public parks, and other places of interest. The DHS stated last year that they would eventually like to do this and, now, the death of bin Laden gives them a reason to do so.
Though I am not a terrorist, a suicide bomber seems like an inefficient way of creating terror when you could easily go across the street from any of these types of buildings and use a rocket launcher. Instead of killing all the people in a small area around you, you’ve now blown up the entire building. All the TSA checks in the world aren’t going to stop that and it certainly won’t stop anyone who is serious about blowing up a building.
If you were a terrorist and didn’t want to blow up a mall or sports stadium, there’s always the rail line. Amtrak has many stops in the United States where you can literally flag down the train, get on, and pay your fare. A terrorist can go a step further and just leave the bomb on the tracks with a pressure sensitive trigger. Blamo! No security checks needed. These scenarios only prove that what is actually going on with the TSA checks is all security theater.
The TSA tells us nothing on their blog. Then again, the TSA blog exists merely to spout the current party line and not to answer real questions anyway. While the TSA is viewed as a joke, the seriousness of conditioning citizens into complying with their demands is no laughing matter.
The death of Osama bin Laden is just another incremental step on the way to a full-fledged police state. We allow ourselves to be whipped up into such a frenzy of fear that we have joyously let the government walk all over us. We need to stop being lazy, turn off the TV, and do something before all of our freedoms are gone for good. The Patriot Act is due to expire at the end of this month. Now is as good a time as any to tell your representatives that you are not afraid and to roll back what has been taken from us. Refuse to be terrorized and you can make a difference in helping to restore our rights.
It’d be nice to think we could actually return to pre-9/11 times, but the government is content with removing our freedoms, particularly if it means sending money along to former politicians for their grand ideas of security theater. In the end, we have to ask ourselves was it really worth it to give up our freedoms in exchange for the perceived notion of safety?
Until we succeed in rolling back these restrictions and disbanding the TSA, Osama bin Laden will live on in new government initiatives aimed at restricting our freedoms further.
