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Patriot
Act doesn't deserve renewal
Those
who are protected to do basically whatever
they want under the Patriot Act are now
fighting to reinstate it.
No,
the War on Terror is not over, but honestly,
this is not a war that will ever end. It
is like the War on Drugs in that drugs will
always exist and people will always use
them improperly. The feds can continue to
fight against it. They may even make a dent
in the drug trafficking; they will make
it more difficult to get harder drugs like
heroin into the United States, but the traffickers
will only get smarter and sneakier because
of the resistance.
Terrorism
is the same way. There will always be opposition
to governments and other countries as long
as super-strength nationalism exists. Countries
can make extreme punishments for terrorism,
but after the first wave of sloppy terrorists,
the good terrorists will slide even lower
under the radar so as not to be detected
until their final move against whoever they
perceive to be the opposition. Terrorism
will always exist, but that does not mean
the Patriot Act should always be active.
Government
officials need the authority to do background
checks and find out if a certain suspect
is indeed a terrorist, but some of the Patriot
Act's allowances are too strong. This act
was meant to be temporary, not a permanent
acceptance of "sneak and peak"
or "delayed notification" (Section
213) warrants. A judge is still needed to
determine if the sneak peaks are acceptable,
but this is decided after the federal agents
have gone into someone's home and rifled
through their things without a warrant.
U.S.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants
the temporary act kept alive a bit longer,
as does FBI Director Robert Mueller. The
latter also would like the right to sneak
into citizens' bank, medical, phone and
Internet records without a judge's approval,
in a manner similar to the way library records
are obtained currently under Section 215
of the Patriot Act. These supporters of
the act do not feel its liberties have been
misused at all. According to Muller, the
FBI has that luxury for drug trafficking
and healthcare fraud but does not for terrorism.
It is easy to picture a situation in which
the FBI would need to examine medical records
for someone suspected of committing healthcare
fraud, or the Internet and phone records
for a suspected child exploitation ring.
Many people read books about terrorism or
how to create a bomb, but that does not
mean the person is involved in a terrorist
plot.
There
is opposition in the Capitol, luckily for
citizens. Senators Larry Craig, R-Idaho
and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. are planning on
reintroducing the Security and Freedom Enhancement
(SAFE) Act, which will still allow the fight
against terrorism, but will check the extreme
parts of the current Patriot Act, which
will expire at the end of this year unless
it is renewed.
The
SAFE Act will review the parts of the Patriot
Act that are not set for expiration.
Hopefully
the legislators will see that there should
be more checks and balances to the Patriot
Act and that SAFE just may be the plan to
do so. Either way, the reign of terror will
not end, but the reign of the Patriot Act
should.
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