I’ve just got back from several days Independence Day hiatus. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that this thread has continued on its course without getting sandbagged. Being as most things being expunged here where from way before the onset of the Patriot Act, and for a short while there, through the rants and raves, I thought I would have to unearth my old aluminum foil head cap and get ready for a Dan Brown, Prozac moment with conspiracy theories flying every which way.

It’s understandable to get such gut churning reactions to such an explosive topic. And without getting poetic I’m happy to see some broader, more even tempered minds helping to level the keel. Yet the outcry is music to my ears. For it tells me that my fellow brethren have not grown mute with discontent and that with every switch of the whip there is still an utterance of despair.

What people need to understand is that all sides of the different branches of government, from the Supreme Court down to the common ombudsman, our checks and balances, will be watching this very closely. Each and every one of them deliberating on opposite sides wouldn’t want to allow an “all-seeing” omnipotence shadowing their every move.

For one thing, if you think you see mistresses now coming out of the woodwork as it where, with inappropriate use of these laws (perhaps even appropriate use), they’ll be falling from the sky. You would see Senators, Representatives, Judges and cabinet members running around with little feathered wisk brooms hiding their every track. No sir, they’ll have none of that! So they’ll watch and watch very vigilantly what transpires within these laws. Laws BTW that will be voted on by the same congressmen and senators that one day may have to stand before these laws.

As it is taught in many colleges and universities in this country, the Constitution is a breathing, living document in so much as it must evolve through the centuries to encompass the needs of all future generations of our society. We are henceforth motivated to understand what the intensions of our forefathers were.

Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (PATRIOT Act 342 pages) Passed in the House 357 to 66. In the Senate only Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin voted against it.

Because there was some controversy because the Bush administration had helped write the provisions some of the more controversial were due to “sunset” (expire December 31, 2005). The Congress was then forced to consider the measures written in 2001 four years later in 2005.

In March 2006, 14 of the 16 provisions were voted into permanence at 89-10 vote in the Senate and 280-138 vote in the House.

As alarming as some of these provisions may seem, so far, none of them will get Quest arrested under the Patriot Act.

Professor John C Yoo of University of California at Berkeley School of Law and former Deputy Attorney General under the George W. Bush administration who often writes aggressively in the Wall Street Journal:

“…the Patriot Act contains a series of evolutionary changes in law enforcement that improve upon, and expand, existing powers already exercised by the government…

…In a hearing last year on the Patriot Act, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California stated: “I have never had a single abuse of the Patriot Act reported to me. My staff e-mailed the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and asked them for instances of actual abuse. They e-mailed back and said they had none.” Democratic senator Joe Biden of Delaware said at the same hearing that “the tide of criticism” being directed against the act “is both misinformed and overblown.”…

…It is true that our nation has a system of secret courts, which use secret evidence presented in closed, classified hearings before federal judges, to grant secret warrants. Critics are correct that these warrants can authorize the secret search and/or surveillance of suspected terrorists without notice to the target. But the Patriot Act did not create these practices. President Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress established them in 1978 in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)…

…FISA requires a standard of proof for a warrant that is generally lower than that required for a normal criminal warrant. The Fourth Amendment generally requires that the government show that probable cause of evidence involving criminal activity exists in order to receive a warrant. In the FISA context, the government need only show that the target is an agent of a foreign power, even if there is no evidence at the time that the target is breaking the law. If the target is a United States citizen or permanent resident alien, the standard is higher and approaches that of a normal warrant sought for criminal investigations…

…Although the U.S. Supreme Court has never conclusively ruled on the question, the lower courts have upheld a national security exception to the Fourth Amendment’s usual warrant standards. Nonetheless, the ability of the government to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance for national security purposes is fully consistent with the Court’s recent approach to the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment declares that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable [emphasis added] searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” According to the Supreme Court in Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, “[a]s the text of the Fourth Amendment indicates, the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search is ‘reasonableness.’” A warrantless search can be constitutional, the Court has recently said, “when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable.” The Court has found in the past that efforts to test for drug use by government officials constitutes a “special need”; it would be surprising if protecting the national security did not also qualify as such. A special need would seem to be present when the government seeks to protect the national security against international terrorists who direct operations within the United States…

…While the Patriot Act builds upon FISA, it creates no revolutionary change in the basic framework that has operated since 1978. Much of the controversy over the Patriot Act stems from confusion over its terms. As a focal point for the argument over civil liberties during wartime, the Patriot Act often receives blame for counterterrorism policies that do not, in fact, have anything to do with it. Detention of terrorists as enemy combatants without trial, for example, occurs under the president’s powers as commander-in-chief and Congress’s authorization to use military force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks; this power is not mentioned in the Patriot Act.

A close reading of the Patriot Act itself will show that its changes to law enforcement powers are relatively modest…”

Encarta

“According to the 2007 FISA report, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,370 application to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches in the United States in 2007, up from 2,176 applications approved in 2006. For the first time, the report includes information regarding the total number of requests made by the Department of Justice with National Security Letter authority for information concerning U.S. persons. in 2006, the government made approximately 12,583 NSL requests for information concerning 4,790 U.S. persons.”

EPIC

2007 FISA Report

Hummm, Quest wasn’t one of those. And to understand the numbers when we’re talking about 303 million people (people in U.S. as of July 2008), means that only a select few are targeted but if you think you may be one of those, then surely something is wrong...with you.

I’m all for it as long as we keep oversight on it. With me…no oversight…no law! The gates of hell will come down on this country otherwise.

On the face of it all, this hardly compares with the outright eavesdropping anti-privacy the new Swedish law seems to be offering its people. Which, BTW, was my initial purpose to point out in this thread without all the sidetracking, but quite a read nevertheless.