The U.S.A. Patriot act and Patriot Act II do a lot more than consolidate existing law. They remove many of the checks and balances that are currently in place. There are a plethora of instances that can be cited from the act that limit our freedoms and the following are just a couple. I will give examples of abuse and leave it to you to actually look at the act.

Sec 212 Emergency Disclosures by ISP's.
ISP's may now voluntarily, though not required, disclose private communications of their customers to law enforcement agencies when the threat of injury is discovered. It also indemnifies ISP's for doing so (you can't sue them).

Example:
I work for a company called "Oil Well Reconstructers Inc.". I send an email to my manager discussing the outcome of a meeting in which we laid out a plan to bid for reconstruction projects in Iraq. I mention that one attendee was being obstructionist and say "I could kill him". My ISP is now free from civil liability to forward the contents of this communication to the DOJ, and you can bet your sweet arse Haliburton would get their hands on it. Of course, this is a flawed premise since Haliburton hasn't actually had to bid on any of their work but you can see my point.

Sec 217 expands cybercrime to be included as a terrorist act. Fair enough, right? Well, the way the law is written, if I work for a company called microcomp, and in explorer I attempt to access my secure corporate network typing: \\supersecretserver.microcomp.com\tradesecrets$
Except that autocompletion in explorer changes it to \\supersecretserver.microsoft.com and I fail to notice before hitting enter. Wham, I have attempted to illegally access a "secured system" belonging to microsoft, which is now an act of terror. My constitutional rights are now suspended and the government is free to pry into every nook and cranny of my existance, even across state boundaries (sec 216 and others). Of course, the ACT allows me to sue the government for reparations afterward but the damage has already been done.

The unconstitutional seizure provisions that were enacted under Reagan and Bush I and were primarily responsible for eradicating all pot, coke, crystal meth, and veggie burgers from American existance have been carried over to the Patriot Act because of their resounding success during the "War on Drugs" (have we declared the end of major operations there yet?). Does anyone need a reminder how many boats and homes have been seized in Florida under the pretense of the Drug Forfiture laws where the owners were merely smoking a joint? A lack of precision in the wording there has led to wide spread abuse of these laws and has put many state and local law enforcement agencies into a "privatized" mode of operation where funding was cut because of expected seizure revenues. In U.S.A. Patriot, it is even scarier because the drug laws at least required the property to be relevant. Patriot defines everything as relevant when it comes to terrorism, so now you lose your boat, your bank accounts, your home, and your freedom. If they follow the model of the drug laws, you may only be entitled to getting your freedom back when found innocent.

You can make what ever arguments that you want about my misinterpretting what is put to paper here, or my penchant for hyperbole, but this is an administration that has shown that it is more than willing to stretch the boundaries of the interpretation of the law to their very limits to accomplish what they want. We have an A.G. that would like to relegate federal justices to the role of ticket clerk at the local multiplex theater since their jurisprudence is apparently unwelcome.

Some of the provisions in the act have sunset clauses, some of them don't. I operate under the hope that a little over a year from now we will have some patriots in the White House and not the current nazi-like regime. But we must also face the possibility that this administration is not necessarily, as hard as it may be to believe, be the bottom of the barrel. You may put your faith in the altruism of this and future administrations, but I assure you I will not.

P.S. I'm sure the nazi-like reference will offend some, and to clarify I am not calling Bush or his puppeteers nazis. What I am saying is that there are some disturbing similarities between Hitler's rise to power and our country's reaction to 911. In particular the parallels between the 'sometimes you must suspend your freedoms' post 911 speech (I can't recall difinitively if that was Bush or the AG), and Hitler's following the Reichstag fire, chilling, truly.

Have a look at http://www.weyrich.com/political_issues/reichstag_fire.html for an interesting read that may give you some insight in to many people's fears. It bears noting that this article is copyrighted 1995 and last updated 1997 and makes no reference to 911, yet its relevance is astounding. You would think that it was written about 911 but I think the author was actually referencing Waco and Oklahoma city.

just my twenty-two cents.

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