Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Patriot Act was intended to be very vague. So vague, the federal government can have a very broad net.
NSA, falls under the Patriot Act. What they do is not illegal, it is unconstitutional. Illegal and unconstitutional are two very different things.
Even if Congress had explicitly authorized the government to collect our phone records, that law would still be unconstitutional. Because the Constitution does not authorize government the power to access our personal information, without a valid search warrant.
Even though it wasfound the NSA program unconstitutional, it did not demand that the government stop collecting our information in this manner. Instead, the court kicked it back into Congress’ court. As these provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of the month and the Appeals Court decided to let Congress decide how to re-authorize this spying program.
Unfortunately, this is where there is not much to Joy. If past history is any lesson, Congress will wait until the spying program is about to expire and then in a panic try to frighten us into accepting more intrusions on their privacy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already put forth a new bill as a stop-gap measure to allow time for a fuller debate on the issue. His stop-gap? A five year re-authorization with no changes to the current program!
The main reform bill being floated, the FREEDOM Act, is little better. Pretending to be a step in the right direction, the FREEDOM Act may actually be worse for our privacy and liberties than the PATRIOT Act!
Call your Congress critter and demand that the Patriot Act be eliminated from the land of the free.
After all, we are the home of the brave.
The Patriot Act was intended to be very vague. So vague, the federal government can have a very broad net.
NSA, falls under the Patriot Act. What they do is not illegal, it is unconstitutional. Illegal and unconstitutional are two very different things.
Even if Congress had explicitly authorized the government to collect our phone records, that law would still be unconstitutional. Because the Constitution does not authorize government the power to access our personal information, without a valid search warrant.
Even though it wasfound the NSA program unconstitutional, it did not demand that the government stop collecting our information in this manner. Instead, the court kicked it back into Congress’ court. As these provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of the month and the Appeals Court decided to let Congress decide how to re-authorize this spying program.
Unfortunately, this is where there is not much to Joy. If past history is any lesson, Congress will wait until the spying program is about to expire and then in a panic try to frighten us into accepting more intrusions on their privacy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already put forth a new bill as a stop-gap measure to allow time for a fuller debate on the issue. His stop-gap? A five year re-authorization with no changes to the current program!
The main reform bill being floated, the FREEDOM Act, is little better. Pretending to be a step in the right direction, the FREEDOM Act may actually be worse for our privacy and liberties than the PATRIOT Act!
Call your Congress critter and demand that the Patriot Act be eliminated from the land of the free.
After all, we are the home of the brave.
Absolutely. That law was a stinker from conception.
The Patriot Act was intended to be very vague. So vague, the federal government can have a very broad net.
NSA, falls under the Patriot Act. What they do is not illegal, it is unconstitutional. Illegal and unconstitutional are two very different things.
Even if Congress had explicitly authorized the government to collect our phone records, that law would still be unconstitutional. Because the Constitution does not authorize government the power to access our personal information, without a valid search warrant.
Even though it wasfound the NSA program unconstitutional, it did not demand that the government stop collecting our information in this manner. Instead, the court kicked it back into Congress’ court. As these provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of the month and the Appeals Court decided to let Congress decide how to re-authorize this spying program.
.
BTW, the NSA was not created by the PATRIOT Act. The NSA existed long before the PATRIOT Act. It was initially created as a strictly military intelligence agency supporting overseas military activity. Back in 1980 when I took a ride on an Air Force RC-135, the rules against domestic surveillance were so strict they were not even allowed to listen to commercial pop radio while in flight--because those bands were domestic American bands, and when they were audited, it was prohibited to have been tuned to any domestic American bands.
President Reagan pulled the NSA as well as my own military intelligence operations (I was tasking U-2 and SR-71 missions at the time) into the domestic arena in 1981 by Executive Order to support the FBI and DEA on the war on drugs. That was the beginning.
Hopefully Wisconsin voters will right a wrong and return Russ Feingold to the Senate in 2016. He was the lone senator who voted against this infringement on our nation's freedom.
So just which right have you lost as a result of the act? I'll go ahead and research it a bit and see what the tie-in is if I get a chance.
I don't have much of a dog in this fight, so I'm curious what the foundations of peoples' theories are in this case.
We all lost our 4th amendment.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Kill the entire Patriot Act. There is nothing patriotic about it.
