Jason sent this to me, but seems too busy to post, so I shall do it for him.

"So this is really fucking scary. Besides trying to make the Patriot Act permanent in its entirety, a bi-partisan bill proposes the following:

The Kyl-Schumer measure would eliminate the need for federal agents seeking
secret surveillance warrants to show that a suspect is affiliated with a
foreign power or agent, like a terrorist group.

This would mean that now you don't have to have any foreign connection to have a secret warrant issued against you with a very low standard of proof, if any."

Eek.

I'm pissed off about a number of things here. First off, there's no reason to even be debating removing the sunset provisions on PATRIOT because they don't come up for two and a half years; to hear that the bill is co-sponsored by D-NY Charles Schumer and is coming up now because of "political jockeying" and "appears to have given [Congress] the chance to move on the issue much earlier than expected" is just bad for my blood pressure An anon Justice Dept. fella says: "The Patriot Act has been an extremely useful tool, a demonstrated success, and we don't want that to expire on us." Not surprising that the rabbit doesn't want to see the garden fence repaired anytime soon.

As for the new secret surveillance standards, if someone's planning to blow up a bomb or hijack a plane, that's an actual crime-crime there, right? So you wouldn't really need to associate them with a terrorist organization to get the wiretap authorization. Or is there something I'm missing about federal law enforcement regulations? Maybe it's just a jurisdiction issue transferring powers local police have to the FBI? Anybody know?
posted by Mike B. at 1:35 PM 0 comments