Next week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will consider a bill (summary) (PDF) to eliminate the sunset provisions from the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as expand that act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Among the expanded powers in this bill:

• Authority for tracking mail of suspected terrorists would be transferred from U.S. postal inspectors to the FBI.
• The FBI would be granted broad, sweeping powers to demand business records without disclosure that a search/seizure took place.
• The sunset provisions of much of the USA PATRIOT Act would be stricken.

Now pretty much every red-blooded American knows that this unpatriotic act should itself be repealed, but here is Congress trying to expand it. Government doesn’t give up power easily, you know.