Patriot Act 'expires'

[Rattrap]

Good news, everyone. Winner of the Premium Link Upgrade , the Patriot Act, has...well, partly expired.

The bad news? The 'partly' is pretty small: Premium Link Upgrade

They may be. But they are far from the only tools in the counterterrorism arsenal, and if they are no longer law come Monday, the United States will still have plenty of authorities to collect intelligence on jihadist and foreign spies.

For starters, there will be what’s left of the Patriot Act itself. One former U.S. intelligence official told The Daily ***** that Section 214 of the law, which allows so-called “pen register/trap & trace,” could be used to collect phone and even email records. That would not only cover the gap from the expiring NSA program that collects the phone records of Americans’ landline calls, but potentially expand the government’s collection. (No wonder the NSA largely views the bill that would reform the Patriot Act as a major win.)

And of course, it looks like we're getting the Diet Patriot Act soon anyway: Premium Link Upgrade

The Senate did vote overwhelmingly to advance the USA Freedom Act, a House-****** surveillance reform bill that GOP leaders opposed but were ****** to accept given the lack of time and other alternatives. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) refused to allow that measure to be adopted in time to replace the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions.

The USA Freedom Act easily cleared a filibuster in a 77-17 vote that appeared to set the stage for eventual passage. But it was not the outcome envisioned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: He had hoped to pass a temporary extension of current law to avoid a midnight shutdown of three PATRIOT Act programs, including the controversial “bulk data” phone record collection program.

But Paul wouldn’t relent, so those initiatives have at least temporarily lapsed, a troubling development for Senate Republicans in just their fifth month in the majority.

Good on Rand Paul. Maybe it's grandstanding, maybe it's playing up for his presidential aspirations - regardless of the motive, I agree with his efforts. You can get information on the USA FREEDOM Act here: Premium Link Upgrade (including the House vote).

 

[MMMariah]

Its long overdue. The right bitches about the NSA and blames Obama but this law was the biggest intrusion into the private lives of US citizens in history. It was used to twist laws and manipulate things outside the realm of what they were really doing. Like when Bush declared that **** dealers were funding terrorism, essentially saying that if you're selling weed in Iowa you could be brought up on federal charges for funding terrorism which is fucking insane.

 

[Mr. Daystar]

Or like when nobama resigned parts of the law back into effect a couple of years ago, and signed that bill to allow drones to fly over American soil...OH WAIT, that's only for our security!

 

[Jack Davenport]

The USA Patriot Act does cast too wide of a net. Emotions were high right after 911. Time to tweak it a bit.

 

[MMMariah]

a bit? lol wasn't it your side not long ago blaming Obama for the NSA intrusion into our lives? Seems it goes back a long way before he was in office. This bullshit law has ******** the privacy of everyone. When due process is taken away then there's a serious problem