The Patriot Act...Stealing Your Liberties In The Name Of Safety!

 

It has often been my experience that most interesting news is the news you don't hear much about. Such is the case with the Patriot Act when it expires on May 29th. It is almost sure to be renewed, as the left and the right both champion its "necessity" in order to maintain our nation's security. One of the more popular renewal proposals has been written by Sen. Patrick Leahy. His proposal would extended the governments ability to use roving wiretaps on multiple electronic devices and to obtain court approved access to business and financial records deemed relevant to terrorist investigations. Additionally the proposal calls for the extension of the "lone wolf" clause, which grants the government power to set up surveillance on individuals suspected of terrorist activity while not belonging to any terrorist group. The proposal calls for these provisions to be extended until 2013 and calls for an existing

un-expiring provision to expire as well. This provision, which currently has NO expiration date, is the most troubling of all. This is the National Security Letters (NSL) provision. This provision grants the government the authority to request information on citizen and non-citizen residents from various sources for the purpose of surveillance. The sources they may gather information from range from user information gathered from Internet services, library checkout records, and even movie rental records. Recently a decision was handed down in court upholding the governments request of twitter account info related to the Bradley Manning / wikileaks case, many believe sites such as Facebook and Google have likely been given similar requests; however neither organization has commented on the matter. The Patriot Act is an offensive piece of legislation which grants the government intrusive powers over citizens like you and me, and is in direct violation of The Bill Of Rights. This act and in particular the NSL provision lays the ground work for the establishment of a police state. I urge everyone to call or write their respective senators and demand that they allow they Patriot Act to expire as well as ending the intrusive NSL provision.  “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,”  -- Ben Franklin


Don't start the revolution without me! --Vault Boy