President George W. Bush today signed the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act, which renews the 2001 Patriot Act and makes 14 of its 16 temporary provisions permanent, saying that “we cannot let the fact that America has not been attacked since September the 11th lull us into the illusion that the terrorist threat has disappeared.”
“Before the Patriot Act, it was easier to track the phone contacts of a drug dealer than the phone contacts of an enemy operative. Before the Patriot Act, it was easier to get the credit card receipts of a tax cheater than trace the financial support of an al Qaeda fundraiser,” Bush said at a signing ceremony Thursday afternoon, just before signing the reauthorization. “The Patriot Act corrected these double standards, and the United States is safer as a result.”
Keep that in mind when you go to the store for cold medicine, and the local pharmacist tells you that you’ve purchased too much already, and you’ll have to wait until next month to get any more. “The bill places limits on large-scale purchases of over-the-counter drugs that are used to manufacture meth. It requires stores to keep these ingredients behind the counter or in locked display cases,” Bush said.
And keep that in mind when the FBI comes knocking, telling you to turn over all your records and to tell no one about it.
Keep that in mind as Homeland Security interferes with your credit card payments.
And remember that the Patriot Act is making you safer by, er, disrupting terrorist plots. Yeah, that’s it. “Federal, state, and local law enforcement have used the Patriot Act to break up terror cells in Ohio, New York, Oregon and Virginia,” Bush said. “We’ve prosecuted terrorist operatives and supporters in California and Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and North Carolina.”
I feel safer already.
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Ray Bronfman
Mar 11, 2006
Fact of the matter is, the Patriot Act has not helped catch any terrorist in the US since it was introduced right after 9/11. All the terrrorist found were before the act took effect. Of the 375,000 suspected names on their list, less than a dozen are located in th US, all the rest are overseas. Even one of the high echelon people in Homeland Security said: “the act has not been that effective”. So, why did they vote to make it permenant? It is obvious the act had other underlying agendas that really has little to do with terrorism. But, it does assumne everyone criminal and limit civil liberties of citizens to this country, and evryone suspected can be arrested at a whim, regardless of reason, and without a warrant. If this is not reincarnation of Gestopo land, I don’t know what is.
David F. Salzl
May 06, 2007
The upatriotic act has been misinterpreted by dirtballs and unsrcupulous authorities to violate the 4th amendment and civil liberties of american citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism. I have been under roving microwave satellite surveillance for almost 4 years now and have been falsely accused of being a violent, methamphetamine manufacturing child pornography distributer to justify the surveillance. The surveillance has an electronic harassment feature to it and the slimeballs that have me under surveillance have made it obvious that my residence has also been illegally accessed and snooped through.