Oh boy oh boy, my favorite topic....
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin
First off one could argue how much ESSENTIAL liberty one is actually giving up through the Patriot Act, especially more than 90% of the said act. Even some of the more demonized parts of the act that still remain are not clear cut violations of constitutional rights as much as it is loosening the requirements needed to maintain reasonable.
Furthermore, there is a definitive argument to make by "Temporary Safety". IE no one is saying "Hey, we're giving up the right to search and seizure forever in exchange for protecting you this one time". People like to ignore the "temporary" line of the second part because it doesn't help them.
Ditto as well for a "little". The Patriot Act completely revamps our intelligence gathering laws and bringing it out of the stone age and into the digital age where things like Chat Rooms, Forums, Instant Messaging, Cell Phones, and other things aren't simply seeds within the imagination of science fiction writers like William Gibson. The amount our laws were stretched, contorted , and manipulated to deal with technology prior to the Patriot Act was riddled with issues.
But I give you props for at least giving the correct quote. Most won't even try that.
In regards to this, excellent. I'm glad to see that when push comes to shove things like this that are needed stay in play. Without a doubt this bill needs to remain in place and is a vital part in intelligence gathering from the smallest of local domestic issues to national security impacting foreign.
The method in which the Patriot Act has been tempered, reforged, and cleaned is the method that needs to continue. Let the sunsets for the more extreme measures that were reasonable in the wake of 9/11 but are less worth while on the "liberty/security" scale expire. Let the ACLU succeed in the cases its correct on in regards to any particular portions of it that are unconstitutional and roll them back. Have senators put forge legislation to remove particular provisions if they feel they are wrong. All this is good.
But do not completely and utterly a bill that early on in its existence even staunch democrat Russ Fiengold has stated was 90% a sound and needed bill. On top of that, this statement came out long before a number of the provisions and measures have sunset or been struck down, likely meaning that % is much higher.
The politics behind this bill have made is so that if it was stricken down and had to be repassed it'd have a hard time, not because it wasn't needed but because of the specter of "patriot". Not to mention it would be a wasteful use of time that would leave our intelligence laws in this country to once again be woefully ancient during the period between it being struck down and the needed portions were placed back into the law.
Reauthorize it, keep it on the books, and continue the various avenues that have been working successfully at removing the portions of it that are either outright unconstitutional, questionable, or are no longer needed based on the distance we are from the most severe of situations.
