

Patriot Act Renewed Without Any New Civil Liberties Protections - CoryOndrejka
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/02/epic-fail-congress-usa-patriot-act-renewed-without

======
SamAtt
There's an unfortunate reality here which is that the Government can't really
prevent terrorist attacks. Israel is much smaller and they've tried much
harder and they can't prevent them so the U.S. stands very little chance.

So another attack will happen some day. It's a given (and both the Bush and
Obama administrations have said as much)

That's where the Patriot Act comes in. Every politician believes it would be
the death of their career if they change or reject the existing law only to
have that inevitable terrorist attack take place right after. And given how
irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right.

So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the
public stops acting irrationally after an attack. I won't be holding my
breath.

~~~
cynicalkane
More accurately, the government _can_ prevent terrorist attacks, but that will
take sophisticated and unpopular foreign policy measures. The Patriot Act,
security theater, war, and other such nonsense is easier to sell to voters and
lobbies.

~~~
JshWright
I think the implication above is that you can't prevent _every_ terrorist
attack. I think that's a pretty defensible argument to make.

Geography alone makes it pretty obvious that you can't stop a determined group
from carrying out an attack. So that leaves making nice with those groups so
that they don't want to attack us.

Given the fact that there are radical groups at either end of just about any
political or religious spectrum you can think of, the idea of appeasing all of
them is nuts. The very actions necessary to appease one group could incite
another to attack.

This is, of course, putting aside the idea that the motivation behind some
violence isn't motivated by our actions at all, but rather by internal
politics within extremist groups. There are a lot of folks out there who are
awfully fond of power, and one of the easiest ways to garner power is to rally
people against a common enemy (who cares if that "enemy" actually instigated
anything... that's easy enough to spin)

So, all that to say... We're never going to prevent every terrorist attack, we
can only work to minimize the collateral damage. In my opinion, the Patriot
Act is just about the biggest example of collateral damage we've seen
resulting from terrorist attacks, and I'm saddened to see that Congress chose
to do nothing to limit that.

~~~
lucifer
Use of violence to further political agenda is hardly a new phenomena. The
straw man argument puts forward the "terrorist" as a new kind of threat to
society which, alas, forces the good people hired by the internationals to
represent the people to throw out the baby and bath water of "Inalienable"
Rights, Due Process, Rule of Law, and civilized norms so that (apparently
completely incompetent) security apparatus can prevent cave men with box
cutters defeating the security envelope of the United States of America (aka
the "empire" LOL).

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America."

Dear framers, your posterity does NOT deserve the "Blessings of Liberty". Now,
respectfully, why don't you roll over cause that is the only revolution that
USA and your posterity can muster at this point.

------
jswinghammer
After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a
congressional action that I've witnessed in my life is anyone surprised? The
Congress care about increasing the power of the government and doing whatever
it is they want to do when they're in power. They like the new powers when
they are in power and criticize them when they are out of power. Though the
Neocons just criticize how much they are used rather than their existence so I
guess they're more consistent.

I wonder when the small government conservatives will leave the Republican
party and when the anti-war, pro civil liberties liberals will leave the
Democratic party?

I think Barack Obama did a masterful job of pacifying the anti-war left by
annoying his intention to withdraw from Iraq after a certain period of time. I
don't know that it will actually happen but it was a pretty smart move to get
it off of people's minds for the most part.

We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition.
I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this.

~~~
guelo
_After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a
congressional action that I've witnessed in my life_

I guess you weren't alive in 2003 for the Guiness world record largest protest
in human history against the Iraq war, including 400,000 in New York, 200,000
in SF, etc

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-
war_prot...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest)

EDIT: took out the London and Rome references

~~~
Eliezer
> including 2 million people in London, 3 million in Rome

Is that outside the US? I don't recognize these cities.

~~~
JshWright
Maybe guelo meant London, Arkansas and Rome, New York.

------
evgen
It's not really surprising if you consider the options that were available:

1) Renew the current law. No real upside for any legislator, but no
significant downside.

2) Reject the current law. Very little upside: the doves, paranoids,
libertarians, and tea party activists who might actually care about this
options are insignificant minorities within the electorate. Significant
downside: it opens a legislator up to all sorts of "<insert incumbent name
here> is making it easier for terrorists" attack ads regardless of the actual
merits of the argument.

3) Amend the current law. An effort which would have needed to start a while
ago. With enough bi-partisan support this could have limited the downside risk
and enabled supporters to make the sort of "we are being smart about
protecting ourselves form terrorists while protecting liberties" arguments
that would have electoral upside, but given the current legislative climate it
would have been a hard task to get the early defectors form the status quo
which would have provided a bit of momentum.

~~~
gnosis
_"2) Reject the current law. Very little upside: the doves, paranoids,
libertarians, and tea party activists who might actually care about this
options are insignificant minorities within the electorate. Significant
downside: it opens a legislator up to all sorts of " <insert incumbent name
here> is making it easier for terrorists" attack ads regardless of the actual
merits of the argument."_

If you haven't noticed, the Republicans and their mainsteram media lapdogs are
going to attack the Democrats as being "weak on national security" and "weak
on terrorism" no matter what they do.

If they want not to be attacked at all, they should just stay completely out
of politics.

Of course, they should pick their battles, and fight the ones that are really
important. It's obvious from their inaction on and even outright support of
the PATRIOT Act, that civil liberties just aren't that important to them, no
matter what their rhetoric might be.

The same has been true regarding their "opposition" to torture, to the Iraq
war, to Bush's Supreme Court nominees, their support of the "public option"
for health care, etc. The Democrats have shown very little spine on these
matters, when it comes time to walk their talk. And the public is noticing.
That's why Congress has such a low approval rating, and why the shine is
wearing-off Obama.

Their spinelessness and willingness to be the Bush-lite party could cost them
dearly in the mid-terms and 2012. They're just lucky the Republican party is
tearing itself apart with their "tea party" splintering and fighting over who
are the "real conservatives".

~~~
evgen
_If you haven't noticed, the Republicans and their mainsteram media lapdogs
are going to attack the Democrats as being "weak on national security" and
"weak on terrorism" no matter what they do._

Of course they were going to get attacked on that point. What matters is if
there is a public perception about a candidate or party that the attacks can
use as leverage to rise above the level of standard electioneering and
actually influence a voter.

 _The Democrats have shown very little spine on these matters, when it comes
time to walk their talk. And the public is noticing. That's why Congress has
such a low approval rating, and why the shine is wearing-off Obama._

You have obviously confused these people with some idealized version of the
world that you imagine might have existed -- they were elected and get to do
what they want to or are able to do, not what you want them to do. They are
all doing pretty much what they campaigned on and what would be expected of
them given the circumstances.

~~~
gnosis
_"They are all doing pretty much what they campaigned on and what would be
expected of them given the circumstances."_

You must be joking. Did Obama withdraw all combat troops from Iraq? Did he
close Guantanamo? Where are all those "green jobs" he promised? Funding
nuclear power plants doesn't exactly qualify. What exactly has he done that
was promised during the campaign? From what I can see he's backpedaled or even
completely flip-flopped on what he promised.

But it's not just about Obama. The Democrats have been heaping on the rhetoric
to seem like an opposition party during the whole Bush term, but when it came
time to actually vote against his policies they virtually always caved (with
social-security being the only notable exception) and voted along with Bush
and the Republicans, whether it was on the funding of the Iraq war, or on the
PATRIOT Act, on torture, on habeas corpus, on wiretapping, etc.

It's not some "fantasy" that they were against these things. They were, _in
word_. But when it came time to act on their rhetoric they caved.

Now that the Democrats are in power, they have more of a chance to effect
change than ever. But what are they choosing to do with that chance? They're
choosing to support and extend Bush's policies (by keeping the Iraq war going,
by expanding the war in Afghanistan, by fighting to keep innocent people in
jail without trial, by continuing to send prisoners to be tortured in other
countries, etc..).

This outrageous behavior is not making them any fans, except among the
neocons, who have heaped much praise upon Obama's cabinet nominees, and must
be very pleased with what they've accomplished.

------
gnosis
You know, the Democrats didn't have to renew the PATRIOT Act _at all_.

If they were serious about protecting civil liberties that's just what they'd
do. And the Republicans couldn't have stopped them.

~~~
cookiecaper
I don't know why anyone pretends that these people actually care anymore.
They're there to get money and power, and to make sure they can get it again
when they go up for re-election. They want to be everything to everyone, which
leads to big problems because you can't do one thing without pissing off
someone, so then they do the other thing too, but in amounts just enough that
neither side will freak out too much, and just so that the Reps can claim to
support whatever suits their campaign.

Take the health care bill, for instance. It doesn't do anything helpful, just
forces everyone to pay for a private insurance policy. Republicans can say
they protected business, Democrats can say they reformed health care and
everyone now has access, businesspeople stay happy and their money keeps
pouring in, normal people are hoodwinked into believing their side did
whatever it was they wanted, and this cycle perpetuates.

------
jsz0
Maybe I'm a defeatist but Patriot Act or no Patriot Act I believe they're just
going to do this stuff anyway. These intelligence organizations aren't really
held accountable often to the public for their actions. Just look at all the
shady stuff they've done over the decades -- and that's just the stuff we know
about. Who knows what really goes on inside the NSA or CIA? If they're out to
get you I really doubt laws are going to save you. We know for an absolute
fact this stuff was happening before the Patriot Act was law. Who went to
jail? Was the President who permitted it held accountable? Nope. Were a
significant number of the Representatives and Senators who voted for the
Patriot Act expelled from office by voters? Nope. Maybe America is getting
what it deserves. It looks like civil liberty violations are going to have to
get _much_ worse before Americans turn off their TVs and put down their Big
Macs and actually care about the issue. The solution won't be so simple as
repealing the Patriot Act either.

------
lallysingh
The Patriot problem isn't going anytime soon. The levels of surveillance
enabled by modern technology were going to get used, somehow, by governments.

Counterterrorism is just the manifesting justification of this inevitability.

The debate on privacy -- or more accurately, the debate on the inflection
point between real safety vs real privacy -- will be long and hard. It's a
complex question that hasn't had an answer settled by any means.

My guess is that it's going to take a lot of work by folks like Wikileaks and
the courts to make understood how the power is really being used. Only after a
few cycles of (massive-problem -> privacy regulation) are we going to see some
rational work in this area.

Sadly this is probably the only way it can happen; there just isn't any real
data on what levels of privacy are appropriate with a civilization built on
current levels of cyber-interconnection.

------
croby
yet to be signed, just passed by the house

------
jackfoxy
I'm shocked, shocked!

~~~
raganwald
Your winnings, sir.

~~~
mhartl
N.B. The parent comment is a seemingly obscure movie reference,* but is
surprisingly Google-able.

*The movie itself is not obscure at all.

~~~
raganwald
Monsieur Raganwald, what kind of a hacker is Captain Foxy? Raganwald: Oh, he's
just like any other hacker, only more so.

------
theschwa
Where can I find a list of the people who voted against the renewal? It's
turning out to be harder to find than I had thought.

~~~
theschwa
It took me a while, but for anyone else who is interested this explains a bit
why it's hard to find the voting record <http://bit.ly/92Qfz4> and this is the
roll call for the vote which also shows the break down for each party
<http://bit.ly/cVkRiC>

------
dougp
Maybe next year

------
JoeAltmaier
It might be a failure of courage by our representatives; or maybe there are
too many irons in the fire to get this done right. Not necessary to conjure up
conspiracies, plenty of ordinary human reasons for this to take too long.

