Thread: FBI'S ABUSE of Patriot Act

What you ALL need to do is go change your registration to Independent like I am! They ALL fight over your vote!!

Bootsie, good idea. But it will have more effect is thousands of voters do it simultaneously or within a week or two of each other. Get my drift?

I thought I posted a response to that yesterday, JuniusJnr. It might have been on another thread but what I wondered was whether there was a possibility that we could get NumbersUSA and FAIR in on the action. I think it would definitely have a bigger impact if we did it in the same week but we need a lot more people than just ALIPAC for it to have any noticeable effect don't you think???

Bootsie, I'm working on it

GO FOR IT!! I'm with you 100%.

This article can be found at www.journalnow.com



Congress is moving to limit the Patriot Act
Some police powers, a legacy of Sept. 11, would be reined in
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, November 10, 2005


WASHINGTON

Congress is moving to curb some of the police powers it gave the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including imposing new restrictions on the FBI's access to private phone and financial records.

A budding House-Senate deal on the expiring USA Patriot Act includes new limits on federal law-enforcement powers and rejects the Bush administration's request to grant the FBI authority to get administrative subpoenas for wiretaps and other covert devices without a judge's approval.

Even with the changes, however, every part of the law scheduled to expire Dec. 31 would be reauthorized and most of those provisions would become permanent.

Under the agreement, for the first time since the act became law, judges would get the authority to reject national-security letters giving the government secret access to people's phone and e-mail records, financial data and favorite Internet sites.

Holders of such information - such as banks and Internet providers - could challenge the letters in court for the first time, said congressional aides involved in merging separate House and Senate bills passed earlier reauthorizing the expiring Patriot Act.

The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has not begun deliberations.

Under the 2001 law, the FBI has been reported to be issuing about 30,000 national-security letters a year, a hundred-fold increase since the 1970s, when they first came into existence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Last year, a federal judge in New York struck down the national-security letter statute as unconstitutional because he said that the law did not permit legal challenges to the letters or a gag rule on recipients of the letters. The administration has appealed.

Civil libertarians praised the deal's preliminary terms, saying that recent accounts of the FBI's aggressive use of national-security letters have lent credibility to their call for caution.

"Without those checks and balances, there will be abuses," said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., of Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances.

The Bush administration says that there have been no abuses. "In the four years since the passage of the USA Patriot Act there has not been a single verified abuse of the act's provisions" said Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman.

The Bush administration says that there have been no abuses.

The Bush administration and many other "administrations" before his, said many similar things. But, unfortunately, saying it doesn't make it so.

Of course. It sounds like an old J. Edgar Hoover movie, doesn't it? I was absolutely STUNNED when I read that the FBI, since 2001, had issued THIRTY THOUSAND national security letters A YEAR. You KNOW there are nowhere NEAR that many verified, suspected TERRORISTS. It is an invasion of privacy plain and simple and I have contacted my representatives this week to DEMAND that that provision be removed from the Patriot Act.

Personally, I believe the Patriot Act is a sham from the get-go. There is a system in this country whereby a certain number of people are allowed to come in legally. If they kept up with where those people are after they get here, there never would have been any reason for a Patriot Act that would give the government a reason to spy on US citizens to start with.

That being said, I had no quarrel with the Patriot Act when the operative word was TEMPORARY. Some of the people who we deemed as left wingers tried to warn us what would happen. Well, now their fears have come home to roost. I think repealing the whole darn thing is a better solution. There are other checks and balances that could help law enforcement find "infiltrators" and just plain evil minded people who plan to do harm.

I think I would feel better if they repealed the whole thing too. It is just SO SAD that it has come to the point that we FEAR our government because they have abused our TRUST. This is NOT OUR AMERICA.