• Creates a broad definition of "domestic terrorism" that may have a chilling effect on the US and international rights to free expression and association.
  • Allows non-citizens to be detained without charge and held indefinitely once charged.
  • Infringes on the right to privacy and removes many types of judicial review over intelligence activities.*

"Law enforcement tools created decades ago were crafted for rotary telephone — not email, the Internet, mobile communications and voice mail.  Every day that passes without dated statutes* and the old rules of engagement — each day that so passes is a day that terrorists have a competitive advantage.  Until Congress makes these changes, we are fighting an unnecessarily uphill battle.  Members of the committee, I regret to inform you that we are today sending our troops into the modern field of battle with antique weapons.  It is not a prescription for victory."

*Does this mean, "with outdated statutes"?    

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

- James Madison  

Overview and recap:
The USA PATRIOT Act:  The Story of an Impulsive Bill that Eviscerated America's Civil Liberties.  The USA PATRIOT Act provides a textbook example of how the United States federal government expands its power.  An emergency happens, legitimate or otherwise.  The media, playing its dutiful role as goad for greater government oversight, demands "something must be done."  Government power is massively expanded, with little regard for whether or not what is being done is efficacious, to say nothing of the overall impact on our nation's civil liberties.  No goals are posted, because if targets are hit, this would necessitate the ending or scaling back of the program.  Instead, the program becomes normalized.  There are no questions asked about whether the program is accomplishing what it set out to do.  It is now simply a part of American life and there is no going back.  The American public largely accepts the USA PATRIOT Act as a part of civic life as immutable, perhaps even more so than the Bill of Rights.  However, this act — passed in the dead of night, with little to no oversight, in a panic after the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor — is not only novel, it is also fundamentally opposed to virtually every principle on which the United States of America was founded.

New America:  Guilty Until Further Notice.  Americans might wrongly think the law enforcement phrase "potential threat" or "risk to the public" only refers to the jihadist or gangster.  Many are probably familiar with the House of Representatives discussing how the FBI uses FBI employees and cooperators as a weapon against Americans; this was described as the FBI's weaponization of law enforcement.  What many might not know is who the FBI described as "potential" threats, or "potential domestic terrorists."  The House of Representatives reported that:  ["][T]he FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.["]

HR7521 — TikTok Ban Assurances and Those Who Remember Patriot Act Assurances.  Serendipitously, or not — depending on who you talk to, I was previously scheduled to be in DC at the moment of inflection for the passage of HR7521, the proverbial "TikToK Ban Law."  Allow me to encapsulate the issues and present the point of those who say there is nothing to worry about.  First, the context that should matter (it doesn't because the USIC are in charge here) is that every element that preceded the passage of the Patriot Act is being duplicated in the passage of the TikTok ban.  Which is to say, everyone is deferring to this ridiculous need to support USA National Security.  We The People have been burned by this approach before, yet so many refuse to see the similarity.

The Benefits of Hardship.  While the Patriot Act broadened the toolkit for tracking down foreign threats, its nefarious use as a domestic surveillance weapon took a sledgehammer to Americans' privacy. [...] In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney erected an unconstitutional infrastructure that could be used to spy on Americans' communications and financial transactions.  They enlarged the welfare state, created whole new departments and agencies, increased debts and deficits, expanded federal intrusion into local education and family life, and squandered a great deal of goodwill both at home and abroad.  Instead of championing conservative principles and constitutional governance, the Bush-Cheney White House championed American empire abroad, while sacrificing rights and freedoms at home.

Keep Your Head on a Swivel.  [Scroll down]  Neither the FBI nor the larger Intelligence Community is motivated by the prospect of saving American lives.  Why would the U.S. government see Americans as expendable?  The most straightforward answer is that it does not serve the American people but is instead interested exclusively in expanding its own powers.  What 9/11 confirmed for the Intelligence Community is that even its worst failures can be used to institute unconstitutional laws, such as the Patriot Act, that serve to broaden government authority.  In the subsequent two decades, the federal government has created a complex surveillance system that enables it to spy on every citizen of the United States.  Not only has freedom been foolishly traded for the promise of security, but also that promise proved to be a lie.

22 Years of Blowback from the USA Patriot Act.  [Scroll down]  Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society.  Not only did the USA Patriot Act normalize the government's mass surveillance powers, but it also dramatically expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens without much of any oversight.  Thus, a byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you're walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.  This doesn't even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.  We have all become data collected in government files.

The Evolution of the American Police State.  In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the reality of international terrorism was fresh in the minds of the American people, The Patriot Act was passed.  An irrational fear had taken over the citizenry that the government used to justify the most sweeping forms of domestic surveillance in the history of the Republic.  The law granted virtually unchecked power to domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  Powers which were quickly turned against the American people who did not genuflect to the political establishment.

DHS: No Return to Pre-9/11 Freedom.  Ever.  Looking back over the last 10 years and thinking about where many of us were and how we felt when the towers fell is surreal.  These are sad thoughts.  But what I find even more saddening is the fact that we have allowed our country to become more and more of a police state over the last 10 years.  And apparently, the end is not in site, and will likely only become worse.  When the Department of Homeland Security was launched after 9/11 and the Patriot Act was launched as a bill that would last only 4 years, many freedom loving Americans squabbled.  Most turned to those rebels and told them to "shut up," that it was necessary to protect America.  Then we allowed the TSA to militarize our airports and treat us like cattle.  Then came the unsecured and blatant violation of personal privacy when travelers data was being collected.  And of course the full body pat downs of children and full-body scans.

Domestic Enemies of the Constitution and the American People.  The political process is, by design, contentious.  Through this tension, the extremes of governance were supposed to be restrained, leading to gradual change, reliable policies, a degree of bipartisanship, and a predictable market economy.  There were always exceptions to the rule, but 9/11 was different, and it opened the door to profound changes in how we engaged the world and the way we viewed our own.  Unprecedented permanent powers were created to surveil Americans citizens, secret intelligence courts were established and normalized, and America's role as guarantor of inalienable rights was no more.  The beginning of the rift between the government and its people results directly from massively increased spending and subsequent actions taken to "protect us," which could also be construed as "control us" — it's a fine line between "for your safety" and "for your enslavement."  Politicians and agencies like the FBI exploited their new mandate to "protect and defend" to increase their power and prestige; today, we live with weaponized bureaucracies and two-tiered justice.

Devin Nunes:  David Weiss is Another John Durham Protective Silo - The Deep State Operation Tracks Back to Obama Weaponizing Intel and DOJ.  This interview segment is almost as if Devin Nunes reads here.  The former House Intel Committee chairman outlines the appointment of David Weiss as another DC silo creation similar in construct to John Durham.  Obviously, Nunes is correct.  Additionally, as Nunes accurately outlines the entire weaponization process traces back to when Barack Obama took office and unleashed the apparatus of the intelligence agencies to target domestic political opposition.  At the same time, Obama's AG Eric Holder created the DOJ National Security Division and then weaponized surveillance under the auspices of FARA and FISA Courts to target one side of the political dynamic.  [Video clip]  Elevator Speech:
  [#1]   The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists.
  [#2]   Obama/Biden then redefined what is a "terrorist" to include their political opposition.

A Specific Type of Continuity.  As we have exhaustively outlined on these pages, the outcome of the Patriot Act was to create a system where every American was now viewed by our federal government through the prism of the citizen being a potential terrorist threat.  The federal government aligned all of our institutions and systems accordingly.  DHS was created to monitor American behavior, the TSA was created to scan American travelers, and the FBI was enhanced with resources to conduct surveillance despite our Fourth Amendment protections within our Constitution.  Instead of the U.S. Govt protecting U.S. citizens from foreign threats, the Patriot Act changed the mission of government to protect itself from potential citizen threats.  In essence, We the People became the suspects, and all of the constitutional viewpoints within the FBI and Dept of Justice were modified to create monitoring systems.

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.  After 9/11, the threat of terrorism was used to justify measures like the Patriot Act that suspended constitutional rights and placed millions of Americans under a shadow of mass surveillance.  Those policies were once controversial but have come to be accepted as the natural prerogatives of state power.  As journalist Glenn Greenwald observed, George W. Bush's "'with-us-or-with-the-terrorists' directive provoked a fair amount of outrage at the time but is now the prevailing mentality within U.S. liberalism and the broader Democratic Party."  The war on terror was a dismal failure that ended with the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan.  It also became deeply unpopular with the public.  Why, then, would Americans choose to empower the leaders and sages of that war to be the stewards of an even more expansive war against disinformation?  It is possible to venture a guess:  Americans did not choose them.  Americans are no longer presumed to have the right to choose their own leaders or to question decisions made in the name of national security.  Anyone who says otherwise can be labeled a domestic extremist.

Related:
House Judiciary FISA Hearing to Examine How Spy Powers Have Been 'Weaponized Against' Americans.  The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday will investigate how Section 702, a law that was designed to help combat terrorism, has been "weaponized against" Americans.  Breitbart News first reported that the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next week on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ahead of Section 702's December reauthorization deadline. [...] A routine audit recently found that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) of Section 702 use found that FBI agents often had political overtones for their search queries of the FISA database.  This includes "the names of a local political party" to see if it had links to foreign intelligence.  The Justice Department reportedly claimed that FBI personnel "misunderstood" the search procedures and that they were "subsequently reminded of how to correctly apply the query rules."

Time to Deal with Root Causes, Not Symptoms.  [Scroll down]  There have been many stories of domestic surveillance conducted by federal agencies, as well as the weaponizing of those agencies against political enemies of the Democrat Party.  Republicans in the House of Representatives are beginning to expose some of the abuses, but nobody is talking about dealing with the root cause that enabled the spying on Americans:  The Patriot Act of 2001.  Few people know that "Patriot" is an acronym that stands for "Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."  And that euphemism means domestic surveillance!  The events of 9/11 stampeded Congress to unanimously pass the Act, which refocused the vast intelligence collection apparatus built to track the actions of potential adversaries onto US citizens for the first time — all in the interests of "anti-terrorism."  The result was weakened bank secrecy laws, new types of warrants on the flimsiest of excuses, and information collection by signals intelligence and electronic surveillance systems focused on Americans on our home soil.  Other increases in the government's surveillance powers are discussed [elsew]here.  Since 2001, the domestic surveillance apparatus has been politically weaponized to go after Democrat-defined terrorists, including "white supremacists," nationalists, and Trump supporters (refer to the continuing FBI investigations of J6 protestors).  A big part of the solution is to repeal the key root cause that opened the door for politicization of federal surveillance capabilities against Americans.  Time to repeal the Patriot Act.

People Behind Biden Announce Creation of Formal National Surveillance State, Yet No One Seems Bothered.  [Scroll down]  Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum. [...] In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.  After 9/11/01, the electronic surveillance system that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad was retooled to monitor threats inside our country.  That is when all of our electronic 'metadata' came under federal surveillance.  That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out.  What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system.

The Politicization of the Department of Justice.  The tragic events of 9/11 marked a turning point in our nation's recent civil rights history.  First the terrorists attacked us — and then, in the name of national security, we began to attack ourselves.  It has become almost cliché to say that we live in a surveillance state, but we do.  Ever since Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, enacted the Patriot Act six weeks after the attacks on 9/11, the ever-present eye of the government has been searching for new and creative ways to spy on American citizens.  The government has the technology to monitor all of our electronic devices, listen to our phone calls, and read our emails and text messages — all under the auspices of national security.  This special law designed for an emergency has become a permanent addition to the government's investigatory toolbox.  The unfortunate reality is that the bulk of the actions taken by law enforcement under the Patriot Act have almost nothing to do with combating terrorism.

Connections, Facebook Spies on Private Messages and DHS Uses Private Chats Against J6 Detainees.  This 'surveillance system' has been of great interest to CTH for several years, in part because it is a key aspect of the domestic intelligence system now operating as a functioning part of the Fourth Branch of Government.  The overwhelming majority of the investigative resources within the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) are used in this whole of network monitoring system.  I cannot emphasize the importance of the connections enough.  Surveillance of domestic communication, to include surveillance of all social media platforms, is now the primary mission of DHS. The information is gathered by social media, funneled by direct portals into the DHS network then distributed to DOJ-NSD and FBI officials as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  This communication surveillance network is what DHS, created as an outcome of the Patriot Act, is all about.

The FBI's Apex Bureaucracy Is Dangerous.  Twenty years after the post-9/11 PATRIOT Act architecture redefined Americans' constitutional rights without amendment ratification or public permission, perhaps it is time for Americans to insist that federal officers once again deign to establish probable cause and execute valid warrants before they go snooping where they have not been invited.  Maybe it is time for citizens to recognize that with their silence and compliance, they have handed away a mountain's worth of personal liberty for an anthill's hollow promise that they would remain secure.  Any way you slice it, nothing about the expansive, entrenched, and cumbersome national security Deep State that exists today is remotely conducive to Americans' constitutional rights or personal liberties.  The surveillance state buttressed by the DOJ and FBI justifies its enduring need to violate Americans' privacy by disseminating waves of fear to the public and pretending that its existence, however unsavory, is critical for Americans' personal survival.  It is far past time for Americans to recognize this ruse as the con it is and reclaim their inherent freedoms.

The Citizenry's Willingness to Surrender their Freedoms Risks a Potential Dissolution or Civil War.  Over the past two decades, far too many citizens of the United States have willingly surrendered their rights and freedoms and now they are on the cusp of being unrestorable.  This erosion and voluntary forfeiture have empowered the ruling elites/radical left.  Ominous societal conditions have been created that risk national dissolution or a civil war.  Three events in the past twenty-one years have been the primary catalysts that have accelerated and exacerbated this seemingly irreversible outcome.  The first: the reaction to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001; the second: the election of Barack Obama; and the third: the lockdown and medical tyranny of the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic.  After the events of September 11, 2001, Congress, with no outcry from the populace and near unanimous agreement from both political parties, passed the Patriot Act and other legislation.  These laws expanded the definition of terrorism and the government's ability to define, at their whim, what "terrorism" is.  Further, the government was granted near unlimited power to combat whatever was defined as "terrorism."  Within less than ten years that power was turned against the American people and new catch phrases began to be used by the ruling class: "white supremacy" and "domestic terrorism".  A new era was spawned which allowed the government to use its newly acquired powers to spy on and intimidate innocent Americans at home and abroad.

Democrats Are Attempting To Jam Through A New Patriot Act That Will Target American Conservatives.  Democrats never let a good crisis go to waste.  After the tragic shooting in Buffalo that left ten dead and three injured, they are renewing calls to pass a bill that will expand the FBI and Department of Homeland Security's powers to investigate domestic terrorism.  Some Republicans were initially supportive of the bill, but after Democrats made a last-minute change to the definition of domestic terrorism that makes it extremely vague, most came out in opposition to it.  RINO warmonger Adam Kinzinger (R-Il.) was the sole Republican to vote in favor of the bill in the House.

FBI opened multiple investigations into protesting parents, GOP lawmakers say.  The FBI has opened multiple investigations into parents protesting education policies, including a father who was upset over mask mandates, according to new whistleblower revelations.  The FBI's activities were publicly revealed in a letter Wednesday from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to Attorney General Merrick Garland.  The specifics of the FBI's investigations were disclosed to lawmakers by whistleblowers.  Garland directed the FBI and the Department of Justice to form a joint task force in October 2021 to investigate threats against school board members after the National School Boards Association asked the Biden administration in a September 2021 letter to investigate parents protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists under the Patriot Act.

Jack's Magic Coffee Shop Reports 2nd Quarter Financials, Net Operating Loss of $128 Million.  [Scroll down]  After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power.  The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit.  That is exactly what Barack Obama was all about.  The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change.  The target was the essential fabric of our nation.  Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch.  From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

My Hippie Vietnam War Professor Was Right About the Dangers of the Patriot Act.  [Scroll down]  Currently, the federal government is isolating and targeting very different enemies of the state than it was in 2001, to say the least.  Among these are soccer moms who don't like their sons being taught that their sex and skin color makes them guilty of some ancestral sin that justifies their having become the victims of perpetual discrimination in applying to college or a job.  They are fathers who don't like the idea that a 16-year-old boy who is pretending that he's a girl can share a shower with his 16-year-old daughter after volleyball practice.  They are parents who don't like that their elementary schoolchildren are being told that they may truly be something other than a boy or a girl, or that they should sexually experiment upon themselves.  They are racial minorities who don't like that their sons and daughters are being taught that they're perpetual victims in America, or that phantom impediments to success are oppressing them.  And many among all of those parents take issue with their children being taught that their race is anything more than an immutable trait that is profoundly unimportant relative to kindness, intelligence, work ethic, and what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as "character" when relating his famous dream to the American people.  Today, the federal enforcement mechanisms meant to combat terrorism, including those of the Patriot Act, are being used against all of those Americans with whom a clear majority ideologically and politically agree.

How Did Ordinary American People Become Domestic Terrorists in The Eyes of The Deep State.  Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  Instead, what Obama and Holder did was to take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum. [...] What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.  Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

Every Tragedy Caused by Government Is Done with the Best of Intentions.  President Bush's "war on terror" in response to the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor not only led to two of the longest wars in U.S. history without producing clear-cut long-term victories but also initiated a mass surveillance state that is now used against Americans by the FBI, NSA, and U.S. military to target constitutionally protected political beliefs.

How Do We Regain Trust in the FBI?  A Pew Research study released last month demonstrated a sharp decline in trust in the government from a high of seventy-seven percent in 1964 to a low that has remained under twenty-five percent since 2007.  If three-quarters of Americans have spent the last fourteen years distrusting the government at large, what does that say about the agencies entrusted with justice and public safety? [...] The parallel between the FBI and the NKVD is not a straight line — at least, not yet.  At the same time, looking at the chronology of when Americans suddenly lost faith in their government (2007), an eerie set of circumstances predate the decline in trust.  The first development that hastened the consolidation of power and authority in federal agencies like the FBI was the Patriot Act of 2001.  It paved the way for expanded police powers in the name of public safety.

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants.  The Department of Homeland Security on Friday [5/28/2021] issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre.  This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized. [...] Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity.  They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country.

Not a single person of honor or integrity can survive inside the DC institutions.  [Thread reader]  I still held the belief there were three branches of government, and there were "checks and balances", and there had to be some way for a good person to expose corruption.  He quickly dispatched those beliefs (with examples).  He explained the "checks and balances" I spoke of did exist at a time when there were three branches of government.  However, that time has long passed.  There is only one overarching DC eco-system now.  The three branch concept is gone.  Doesn't exist.  As he explained, the levers of power are all controlled by the same system, and behind that system are positions — not people.  "Positions."  People are evaluated based on their ability to support and protect the system.  Their skill level is what moves them into position.  Position.  Evaluation.  Next Position.  Evaluation.  Etc.  The system more like an institution.  Within the institution there are divisions.  The divisions are what we used to call "branches".  The divisions (branches) are not independent from the institution of DC.  The divisions are operated by people in power who hold positions.  He identified the timeline of this institutional creation as a slow build (over decades), but most visibly increasing in publicity after 9/11/01 and the patriot act.  Once the patriot act made the government responsible for total safety; the previously embedded bad actors took full control.  One office of particular note was the creation of the ODNI.  As he noted the amassing of surveillance power.  [O]nce that Rubicon was crossed, everything after was downstream and unstoppable.  The institution of the total intelligence apparatus now had full control...

Security Theater Redux.  After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government employed various counterterrorism measures in an atmosphere of panic.  Some made sense and stood the test of time, such as vetting airline passengers or banning knives on planes.  Others were abandoned and memory-holed as ineffective and wasteful, like the Iraq Campaign.  The Right focused on the failure of security efforts to distinguish loyal and law-abiding Americans from high-risk groups.  The spectacle of children and grandmas being subjected to humiliating pat-downs at airports stands out as particularly galling.  The Left and the libertarians were wary of the expansive authority of intelligence agencies and the domestic use of the military.  In one instance, a tank was parked outside of Miami International Airport, as if al Qaeda would unleash an armored attack.  Critics labeled such dramatic and mostly symbolic efforts for what they were:  security theater.

Democrat Domestic Terrorism Can No Longer Be Ignored.  Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act defines "domestic terrorism" as activities involving acts in violation of state or federal criminal laws that are "dangerous to human life" and "appear to be intended" either to (i) "intimidate or coerce a civilian population," (ii) "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or (iii) "affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping."  Intimidating a civilian population?  Coercing government officials?  Engaging in mass destruction and assassination of police?  Ding-ding-ding! [...] Democrat domestic terrorists light fires everywhere they go, egg on violence against police and civilians, and threaten businesses who refuse to pay into their protection rackets by "donating" to their favorite money-laundering 501(c)(3)s; and our criminal justice system looks the other way or even actively abets the terrorists by releasing them from jail cells just as soon as they arrive, while leaving Americans to fend for themselves.

Brainwashing & the New Vocabulary: 12 Words & Phrases I Never Want to Hear Again.  Remember how after September 11th happened, there was that nasty bill that formed the TSA and authorized all sorts of surveillance against the American people and they called it, ironically, The Patriot Act?  Of course, we knew then that the bill was anything but patriotic, however, that didn't stop it from being passed and trampling all over the Constitution.  The word "patriot" was perverted by those in power who wanted everyone to fall into lockstep with the unconstitutional searches at airports and many other invasions into our privacy.  Which brings us to another word that doesn't mean what people think it means — it was all done in the name of "security."

The Bushes Have Poisoned the Well Forever.  [Scroll down]  After Clinton's eight years were up, it was George W.'s turn to be President.  Although portrayed as a "conservative" like his dad and the rest of the GOP, he presided over massive spending binges, mostly on the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.  He also pushed the Patriot Act, the Republican version of Obamacare insofar as it was a massive bill that members of Congress admitted they didn't read, was rammed through and signed into law with little scrutiny and contained lots of horrible surprises for the American people.  It also had the effect of dramatically increasing the power of the federal government over the American people, effectively treating us all as terrorists and international criminals and stripping away our Constitutional rights.

How big is the terrorist watch list?  Who is on it?  What is often described as a single, unified list is actually a collection of lists, or databases, created or expanded under the George W. Bush administration to avoid the breakdowns in intelligence sharing that precipitated the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Here's how it breaks down:  The FBI's Terrorist Screening Database is the U.S. government's primary watch list, and what people usually mean when they refer to the terrorist watch list.  It contains about 1 million records.  About 5,000 of those records — 0.5 percent — are about Americans.  The screening database is subdivided into other lists.  The most well-known of these is the no-fly list, whose members are barred from commercial air travel that passes through the United States.  The no-fly list contains about 81,000 names, up from 16 on the eve of September 11, 2001.  About 1,000 are Americans.

How to Land on the Government Watch List.  [T]he U.S. Government's Consolidated Terrorist Watch List keeps track of people who are known or suspected terrorists.  These are the people the U.S. government doesn't want to board planes, enter the country or obtain a visa without a lot of hassle.  While the government makes no secret of the list's existence, its official contents are off-limits to the public.  That's because the federal government believes if terrorists are aware of being on a watch list, they will become more vigilant and tricky in committing heinous crimes.

72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered "Potential Terrorists" In Official Government Documents.  At one time, the term "terrorist" was used very narrowly.  The government applied that label to people like Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists.  But now the Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term "terrorist" is being applied to large groups of American citizens.  And if you are a "terrorist", that means that you have no rights and the government can treat you just like it treats the terrorists that are being held at Guantanamo Bay.  So if you belong to a group of people that is now being referred to as "potential terrorists", please don't take it as a joke.  The first step to persecuting any group of people is to demonize them.  And right now large groups of peaceful, law-abiding citizens are being ruthlessly demonized.

Patriot Act enabled Russia collusion hoax and further Deep State treachery.  In October of 2001, and following 9/11, President George W. Bush told the nation that the Patriot Act would "give intelligence and law enforcement officials important new tools to fight a present danger."  It was assumed — foolishly — that the threat was from terrorism.  But when and as reauthorized, the Patriot Act during the administration of President Barack Obama, Obama claimed that tweaks to the act would allow US law enforcement to better target homegrown "lone wolves."  Again, the assumption — a foolish one — assumed that the targets would largely be self-motivated terrorists.  Terrorists like Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  But leave it to official Washington to stretch any legal definitions beyond their original, intended scope.

FBI attempted to retroactively use the PATRIOT Act to sidestep FOIA.  The passage of the PATRIOT Act has been decried as one of the most widespread attempts by the government to overreach in order to bypass the judicial and legislative restrictions that had otherwise been placed on it.  The FBI file for former CIA Station Chief William F. Buckley details one such attempt, over a decade after his murder.  In late July of 2001, the FBI was responding to a FOIA request for the file on Buckley (no relation to the conservative commentator), the CIA station chief who had been kidnapped in Lebanon and later died as a result of the kidnapping.

The Imperial President's Toolbox of Terror:  A Dictatorship Waiting to Happen.  [Scroll down]  The Bush Administration claimed it could strip American citizens of their constitutional rights, imprison them indefinitely, and deny them legal representation simply by labeling them as enemy combatants.  While the Obama Administration jettisoned the use of the term "enemy combatant," it has persisted in defending the president's unilateral and global right to detain anyone suspected of supporting terrorist activities.

Engineered Chaos And Fear The New Norm In America As Many Assume The "Reality" Of Staged Events.  There was a time when there was actually a sense of normality all around us and there was a sense of justice and accountability at the government level even if it was mostly the perception of it. [...] There was even a time when you could comfortably plan on traveling pretty much anywhere in the world, especially here in the United States for business or pleasure without having to deal with the prospect of "terrorism" or another psyop mass shooting, terror truck drivers, snipers or lockdowns.  You also didn't have to worry about a violent police state, checkpoints, surveillance cameras, killer robots, government spying and 24/7 fear, death and destruction being put out by the mainstream media news.  There was a sense of order, in other words, that many of us still remember and we remember exactly what it felt like.  Obviously you can't miss something or yearn for the days you've never experienced.  This disconnect that the younger generation has to what some may refer to the good old days is important in the grand scheme of things because this chaos is all they know and it is a grand example of learned helplessness.  For the first time in modern American history we have a generation that doesn't know what order, calmness and peace looks like.

House reverses course, upholds NSA phone snooping as terrorist attacks shift debate.  The fight is over snooping programs targeting foreigners' communications under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but which also end up snaring Americans' emails and phone calls.  Intelligence agencies claim the right to go through that data when they are investigating terrorism and say it's critical to preventing plots or learning about the contours of attacks, such as the one in Orlando, as they happen.  Civil libertarians argue that the data shouldn't be collected in the first place and say if agents are going to peer into it, they should get a warrant before looking at Americans' data under Section 702.

6 Things To Know About Tying Gun Sales To A Watch List.  [#5] Hillary Clinton's 'Spirit of 9/12' is the specter of pervasive government surveillance.  It is true that in the shocked days after 9/11, the two major sides of American politics came together for a brief moment.  But their response went too far.  During this period of unity, Congress authorized an indefinite military action in Southwest Asia that almost 15 years later stretches across the Middle East and into Africa with no end in sight.  During this period of unity, Clinton and 97 other senators came together to pass the USA PATRIOT Act, which established a surveillance regime that took civil libertarians more than a decade to dismantle.  In light of these previous terrorism overreactions, the burden is on the individuals demanding that we do something (anything!) to demonstrate that their proposals are reasonable and include responsible safeguards for constitutionally protected rights.

Congress Must Shut the Backdoor on Section 702 Surveillance.  The fight over NSA surveillance is about to heat up again.  This week, the House will consider a measure that would require the NSA and other government agencies to follow due process and obtain a warrant to collect the communications of American citizens.  Through an amendment to H.R. 5293, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2017, the House could defund warrantless government searches of the database of information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  The amendment, proposed by Reps.  Massie (R-Ky.), Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Poe (R-Texas), would prevent the NSA's backdoor spying on American citizens through the use of U.S. person identifiers.  The Massie-Lofgren-Poe amendment also prohibits government agencies from requesting that U.S. companies build security vulnerabilities into their hardware or software in order to make it easier for the government to access them.  This would protect encryption, which has been undermined by the NSA's breathtaking extension of surveillance.

Four librarians gagged and threatened with prison time under the Patriot Act.  Using the broad powers granted under the USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI demanded that 4 librarians produce private information about library patrons' reading habits, then used an endless gag order to force them to remain silent about the request for the rest of their lives under penalty of prison time.

CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act.  Why was the CISA included in the omnibus package, which just passed both the House and the Senate?  Because any "nay" votes [...] would also threaten the entire budget of the federal government.  In other words, it was a question of either Americans keeping their privacy or halting the funding of the US government, in effect bankrupting the nation.  And best of all, the rushed bill means there will be no debate.  The bottom line as OTI's Robyn Green said, "They've got this bill that's kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they've seen an opportunity to push it through without debate.  And they're taking that opportunity."  The punchline:  "They're kind of pulling a Patriot Act."  And when Obama signs the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill in a few hours, as he will, it will be official:  the second Patriot Act will be the law, and with it what little online privacy US citizens may enjoy, will be gone.

Agents performing warrantless searches are the hallmark of totalitarianism.  In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something — anything — to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution.  Its principal target was the right to privacy, which is protected in the Fourth Amendment.  At President George W. Bush's urging, Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001.  This 315-page statute passed the House of Representatives with no debate, and there was very limited debate in the Senate.  I have asked many members of Congress over the years whether they read this bill before they voted upon it, and I have yet to find a member who did.  In the House, that would have been impossible; the bill was made available to representatives only 15 minutes prior to their vote.

The Phony Surveillance Debate.  If any terrorists are reading this column, now would be a good time to turn on C-Span 2.  For the next few days, you guys got it made.  Section 215 of the Patriot Act has expired and the Senate has only just started debating the bill that would renew and tailor these authorities.  So if you suspect you might be under investigation, go ahead and switch burner phones.  No more roving wiretaps.  Feel free to contact any compatriots inside the United States on a landline.  No more bulk collection of telephone metadata.  Gather ye rosebuds.  Carpe diem.  This at least is what the White House and others would have you believe.

The Patriot Act must go: It assaults our freedoms, doesn't keep us safe.  [Scroll down]  After the House Judiciary Committee took all this into account in its redrafting of the proposed Patriot Act, the House Republican leadership and the George W. Bush White House pulled a fast one.  They switched the painstakingly negotiated version of the Patriot Act for the original version and posted the original version on the House intranet, and leadership scheduled a vote within the hour of posting.  It is safe to say that no member of the House read the Patriot Act in that hour.  It takes about 20 hours to read, as it is hundreds of pages in length, and it amends dozens of prior statutes that also must be read.  Most House members clearly never knew what they were authorizing.  The only negotiated-for provision that survived the switch was the sunset provision of section 215.  Section 215 only authorizes the feds to write their own search warrants for business records and for surveillance of so-called lone-wolf terrorists no matter what telephone they may use.  The Bush and Obama administrations secretly persuaded the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court that somehow section 215 also permitted the NSA to acquire bulk data from telephone and computer use based on the government's needs, not based on probable cause.

White House: 'There is no plan B' if Patriot Act powers expire.  The White House said Friday [5/29/2015] there is "no plan B" if key Patriot Act powers expire at midnight Sunday [5/31/2015].  Administration officials pressed Senate leaders — currently on a weeklong Memorial Day recess — to return to Washington and immediately pass legislation that would extend most government surveillance tools but also would take steps to protect Americans' privacy.  "There is no plan B.  There is no executive action the president can take to give our law enforcement and national security professionals all the tools they need," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

FBI admits no major cases [have been] cracked with Patriot Act snooping powers.  FBI agents can't point to any major terrorism cases they've cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department's inspector general said in a report Thursday [5/21/2015] that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating.  Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations.

House Votes to End N.S.A.'s Bulk Phone Data Collection.  The House on Wednesday [5/13/2015] overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government's bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who insists that existing dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party.  Under the bipartisan bill, which passed 338 to 88, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls made by Americans.  In addition, the legislation would bar permitting bulk collection of records using other tools like so-called national security letters, which are a kind of administrative subpoena.

Why the EFF is pulling its support for the USA Freedom Act.  The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has determined in American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) v. Clapper that the National Security Agency's telephone records program went far beyond what Congress authorized when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act in 2001.  The court unequivocally rejected the government's secret reinterpretation of Section 215.  Among many important findings, the court found that Section 215's authorization of the collection of business records that are "relevant to an authorized investigation" could not be read to include the dragnet collection of telephone records.  The court also took issue with the fact that this strained application of the law was accomplished in secret and approved by the secret and one-sided Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court).

Security officials, surveillance hawks get busy with fearmongering ahead of Patriot Act deadline.  The June 1 deadline for Congress to renew portions of the Patriot Act that authorize the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs is drawing near.  For top government officials and many establishment Republicans, that means it's time to double down on homeland security fearmongering.

White House report offers more on NSA spying on Americans' calls, with Patriot Act set to expire.  With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday [4/25/2015] unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans' calls and emails.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times.  The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.

Renew the Patriot Act.  Many observers postulate that Muslims in America are inherently different than those in Europe, hence they don't need surveillance.  Here they are assimilated, there they are separate.  I'm not so sure — America has had plenty of trouble with radical Muslims:  from the Boston Marathon bombers; from Muslims weaned in radical mosques in Minnesota joining Jihad; from the Fort Hood shooter in Texas, and on.  Perhaps the biggest difference is that in Europe Muslim immigrants represent a far greater proportion of the population; for example, about 10% in France.

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  [#5]  We have been seeing a decline in freedom for a longtime but after 9-11 the loss personal freedom, privacy and constitutional rights have been on a rapid decline.  Now we are constantly, watched, monitored and recorded, we can now legally be detained and held indefinitely without a trial or due process.  And U.S. citizens can even be assassinated on U.S. soil by order of the president.  Just like the imaginary, war on drugs, the war on terror has been used as an excuse to trample on individual constitutional rights and to increase the power of the government and the ultra wealthy that control the country from behind the curtains.

How a Court Secretly Evolved, Extending U.S. Spies' Reach.  Ten months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation's surveillance court delivered a ruling that intelligence officials consider a milestone in the secret history of American spying and privacy law.  Called the "Raw Take" order — classified docket No. 02-431 — it weakened restrictions on sharing private information about Americans, according to documents and interviews.  The administration of President George W. Bush, intent on not overlooking clues about Al Qaeda, had sought the July 22, 2002, order.  It is one of several still-classified rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court described in documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

Spy Chief: We Should've Told You We Track Your Calls.  Even the head of the U.S. intelligence community now believes that its collection and storage of millions of call records was kept too secret for too long.  The American public and most members of Congress were kept in the dark for years about a secret U.S. program to collect and store such records of American citizens on a massive scale.  The government's legal interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act that granted the authority for this dragnet collection was itself a state secret.

Ruling Protects Bank, Phone, Other Records from FBI 'Security Letters'.  A federal judge in San Francisco has declared "national security letters" from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to banks, phone companies, and other businesses to be unconstitutional.  The March 15 ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston declared the letters do not "serve the compelling need of national security."  The FBI has been issuing thousands of letters annually on its own authority and with no judicial review to obtain confidential customer information.  The letters also order the companies not to disclose the demands for information to targeted customers or others.  The FBI began issuing the letters after the USA Patriot Act became law in 2011.

The Drift toward Despotism.  [Scroll down]  But one notes that the Supreme Court has dramatically circumscribed Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure when it occurs at America's border, and post-9/11 the "border" has been redefined to mean anywhere within 100 miles of the actual frontier.  Many European countries are not 100 miles wide in their entirety.  A hundred-mile buffer zone from Belgium's northern border, for example, would be well south of the southern border and deep into France.

NSA director admits to misleading public on terror plots.  In so many words, NSA director Keith Alexander admitted Wednesday [10/2/2013] that the Obama administration had issued misleading information about terror plots and their foiling to bolster support for the government's vast surveillance apparatus.  During Wednesday's [10/2/2013] hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange: [...]

Court Reveals 'Secret Interpretation' Of The Patriot Act, Allowing NSA To Collect All Phone Call Data.  The FISA Court (FISC) today [9/17/2013] released a heavily redacted version of its July ruling approving the renewal of the bulk metadata collection on all phone calls from US phone providers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.  This is part of the "secret interpretation" as to how the FISC interprets the Patriot Act's "business records" or "tangible things" section to mean that the government can order a telco to turn over pretty much all records — even as the very author of the law says it was written specifically to not allow this interpretation.

Govt to declassify some secret court opinions.  The Justice Department is declassifying portions of some secret court orders concerning the government's authority to seize records under the Patriot Act.

The IRS, the NSA, and Obama's Dirty Tricks.  [President Obama] can't blame the Patriot Act on President Bush:  the act expired in March 2011; Congressional Democrats had to vote to keep the Patriot Act and Obama had to approve its reauthorization.  Additionally, Section 215 of the Patriot Act clearly states that only phone calls or other communication with a foreign connection can be tapped.  There is no authorization to tap into electronic communications between domestic residents of the U.S.

Why you should worry about the NSA.  My concerns are twofold.  First, the law under which President George W. Bush and now President Obama have acted was not intended to give the government records of all telephone calls.  If that had been the intent, the law would have said that.  It didn't.  Rather, the law envisioned the administration coming to a special court on a case-by-case basis to explain why it needed to have specific records.  I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point.  On issues so fundamental to our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.

The Founders warned us.  As Congress and the White House pasted together and passed the so-called Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on the New York World Trade Center, a few conservatives raised questions about the degree to which the nation seemed ready "to trade liberty for security."  Those questions fell on deaf ears as leaders of both parties concluded that a level of government intrusion and "more flexible" interpretations of the Constitution's civil liberties protections were in order.

This abuse of the Patriot Act must end.  "Big Brother" is watching.  And he is monitoring the phone calls and digital communications of every American, as well as of any foreigners who make or receive calls to or from the United States. [...] The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can.  I disagree.

FBI sharply increases use of Patriot Act provision to collect US citizens' records.  The FBI has dramatically increased its use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain a vast store of business records of U.S. citizens under President Barack Obama, according to recent Justice Department reports to Congress.  The bureau filed 212 requests for such data to a national security court last year — a 1,000-percent increase from the number of such requests four years earlier, the reports show.

FBI requests for records under Patriot Act have increased 1,000% in just four years; Update: Data-mining goes deeper than thought?  It's not just the number of requests, it's the scope of them.  They're not demanding records related to particular investigations anymore, they're demanding huge troves of records on random Americans for data-mining purposes, the same thing Patriot Act co-author Jim Sensenbrenner complained about a few days ago but somehow didn't foresee in 2001.

Sensenbrenner: Obama Administration's NSA Assurances 'a Bunch of Bunk'.  Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the PATRIOT Act on the House floor in 2001, has declared that lawmakers' and the executive branch's excuses about recent revelations of NSA activity are "a bunch of bunk."  In an interview on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday morning, [6/12/2013] the Republican congressman from Wisconsin reiterated his concerns that the administration and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court have gone far beyond what the PATRIOT Act intended.  Specifically, he said that Section 215 of the act "was originally drafted to prevent data mining" on the scale that's occurred.

A Little Wisdom from Benjamin Franklin.  [Scroll down]  Just like those unpleasant chaps in Orwell's 1984, the fact that we are now and apparently ever shall be on a war footing means that we are living in a state of perpetual emergency, which in turn means that he, the man in charge, can do pretty much whatever he wants to whomever he wants, and so can his minions. [...] Few people, I think, would deny that extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures. [...] But what we have here is the fabrication of perpetual emergency in order to justify the unlimited and permanent expansion of of government power.  The other word for that process is tyranny.  It doesn't happen all at once.  But it's happening pretty fast.

The Patriot Act is merely a fig leaf to cover what tyrants would do anyway.
Document: Sen. Obama Opposed 'Government Fishing Expeditions' Under Patriot Act.  A "Dear Colleague" letter signed by then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) in 2005 urged an end to "government fishing expeditions" under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to gather records on American citizens indiscriminately.  The letter was also signed by eight other Senators, including John Kerry (D-MA) and Chuck Hagel (R-ND), who currently serve in President Obama's Cabinet as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, respectively.

Washington's dark secrets.  [Scroll down]  Moreover, because of rules governing classified information, members of Congress were strictly limited in what they could say publicly.  Wyden and Udall, both members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, grew increasingly worried about the government's interpretation and application of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the government's ability to collect information, but they could do no more than publicly hint at their concerns.  As a result, their warnings went largely ignored by the public, which couldn't decipher them.  This gets to the broader issue of what the public deserves to know.

'Fascism!': The Five's Beckel Explodes At Obama Administration Over 'Deplorable' NSA Phone Records Grab.  "I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I've heard," Beckel began.  "They have no right to the phone records...  It is illegal, it is unconstitutional and it is deplorable.  I didn't like it when they did it during the Bush administration and I don't like when they're doing it now."  "They have taken this PATRIOT Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and abused it," Beck added.

Author of Patriot Act says NSA phone records collection 'never the intent' of law.  The author of the Patriot Act said Thursday [6/6/2013] that a secret program under which the Obama administration was collecting phone records from millions of Americans is "excessive" and beyond the scope of the law.  Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who wrote the 2001 law, was among a host of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who raised alarm over the practice.

The Editor says...
If you can't foresee unintended consequences, you shouldn't write laws.

Thank You for Data-Mining.  Well, another day, another Washington furor.  This one is over a National Security Agency phone data monitoring program, but unlike the other White House scandals there seems to be little here that is scandalous.  The existence of the program was exposed years ago and such surveillance is a core part of the war on terror, if we can still use that term.

President Obama's Dragnet.  [Scroll down]  The administration has now lost all credibility.  Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.  That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.  Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night [6/5/2013], we now know the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon's business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system.

Ruling Protects Bank, Phone, Other Records from FBI 'Security Letters'.  A federal judge in San Francisco has declared "national security letters" from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to banks, phone companies, and other businesses to be unconstitutional.  The March 15 ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston declared the letters do not "serve the compelling need of national security."  The FBI has been issuing thousands of letters annually on its own authority and with no judicial review to obtain confidential customer information.  The letters also order the companies not to disclose the demands for information to targeted customers or others.  The FBI began issuing the letters after the USA Patriot Act became law in 2011.

Obama Continues His War on the Fourth Amendment.  The Patriot Act — written in defiance of the Constitution and in ignorance of our history — permits federal agents to write their own search warrants, just as the king and Parliament had permitted British soldiers to do.  Those agent-written search warrants are intended to be limited to the search for evidence of terror plots and are theoretically limited to the seizure of physical records in the custody of third parties, like lawyers, doctors, hospitals, billing clerks, telephone and Internet carriers, and even the Post Office.  (Did you know that federal agents can see your mail and your legal and medical records without permission from a judge?)  This abominable piece of legislation sacrificed freedom for safety and enhanced neither.

When the government demands silence.  [Scroll down]  In our own post-Sept. 11 era, the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government's signature anti-terrorism legislation, the Patriot Act.  It was born in secrecy, as members of the House of Representatives were given 15 minutes to read its 300 pages before voting on it in October 2001, and it operates in silence, as those who suffer under it cannot speak about it.  The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs).  This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution [...]

The grand illusion of partisan politics.  [Scroll down]  As an American caught up in the fervor and need for justice in response to the 9/11 attacks, I'll admit that I accepted and supported the passage of the various laws and formation of the different agencies, from the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland Security.  I'll take full responsibility for my errors in judgment.  Once I was able to shake off the initial shock of the event and conduct my own research into the larger agenda, I was able to see that we were, and still are, being lied to by elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum.

Congressional Abdication.  Perhaps the greatest changes in our defense posture and in the ever-decreasing role of Congress occurred in the years following the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil of September 11, 2001.  Powers quickly shifted to the presidency as the call went up for centralized decision making in a traumatized nation where quick, decisive action was considered necessary.  It was considered politically dangerous and even unpatriotic to question this shift, lest one be accused of impeding national safety during a time of war. [...] Hundreds of billions of dollars were voted for again and again in barely examined "emergency" supplemental appropriations for programs to support our ever-expanding military operations.

Who (or What) Are They Looking For?  In response to the events of September 11, 2000 and after designating an axis of evil yet carefully navigating around the question of Islam and its fanatics, the federal government in Washington rushed to increase surveillance and security measures to guard against Al-Qaeda and the threat of terrorism.  We, the citizens who are not responsible for terrorism, are saddled 12 years later with the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Safety Administration and a surveillance technology that is everywhere, all the time.  Nine trillion dollars later are we more secure?

Once You're On the 'List,' You Can't Get Off.  TransUnion had notified the dealership that [Sandra] Cortez's name was on the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control list owing to its resemblance to a "specially designated individual" from Colombia named Sandra Cortez Quintera.  This was obviously a coincidence involving a very common Latino name.  However, under the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, businesses such as the John Elway Subaru dealership in Denver face draconian fines and prison sentences for extending credit to anyone suspected of terrorist connections.

Too Much Bipartisanship.  The 112th Congress has not been a bright one for our civil liberties.  While new champions have emerged like Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the Senate and House freshmen like Justin Amash, in national security state matters, the majority of both parties are in agreement.  First, there was the so-called "Patriot" Act reauthorization.  After a drawn out fight over 2011, the statists extended three controversial provisions until 2015.  Then came the FY 2012 NDAA and Section 1021 authorizing indefinite detention of American citizens, effectively turning America into a "battlefield" where anyone captured may be considered an enemy combatant.

Government Spying Out of Control.  The Patriot Act, which was enacted in 2001 and permits federal agents to write their own search warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment, actually amended FISA so as to do away with the FISA-issued search warrant requirement when the foreign person is outside the U.S.  This means that if you email or call your cousin in Europe or a business colleague in Asia, the feds are reading or listening, without a warrant, without suspicion, without records and without evidence of anything unlawful.  The Patriot Act amendments to FISA also permit the feds to use anything they see or hear while spying in a federal court.

Adams 2016.  Sometimes emergencies necessitate government action.  The problem is that once the emergencies pass, the government apparatus stays in place.  Income taxes and other permanent solutions to temporary problems have plagued us for far too long (and they have been used to fuel further government expansion).  The PATRIOT act is also interfering with my efforts to reduce the entanglement between our government and our banking system.  Therefore, it must go.

        "'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded."

— F.A. Hayek               

The report lists several problematic portions of the new bill including:
    • The government could bug, wiretap, or search anyone in America for up to 15 days without going to any court.
    • The government could seize personal information about Americans (including credit information, educational transcripts, etc.) in a wide range of circumstances without the approval of any court.
    • Individuals and groups which advocate Second Amendment rights could be classified as "foreign powers" and subjected to electronic surveillance for up to one year without the approval of any court.

On Saturday, December 13, 2003, President Bush signed the Intelligence Authorization Act into law.  This was the same day Saddam Hussein was captured and Americans, thus, were obviously distracted.  It included a redefinition of financial institutions.  The phrase, which previously referred to banks, now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office and the catch-all phrase of any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

— James Madison    

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

"A Republican administration will work to improve international cooperation against all forms of cross-border criminality, especially the burgeoning threat of cyber-crime that threatens the vitality of American industries as diverse as aerospace and entertainment.  Nowhere has the [Clinton] administration been more timid in protecting America's national interests than in cyberspace.  Americans have recently glimpsed the full vulnerability of their information systems to penetration and massive disruption by amateurs.  A sophisticated terrorist or adversary government could potentially cripple a critical U.S. infrastructure, such as the electrical grid or a military logistics system, in time of crisis.  A new Republican government will work closely with our international partners and the private sector to conceive and implement a viable strategy for reducing America's vulnerability to the spectrum of cyber threats, from the adolescent hacker launching a contagious computer virus to the most advanced threat of strategic information warfare."

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."

- Lyndon B. Johnson        

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

- James Madison        

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

- Samuel Johnson