Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act
OPS_admin | Sep 17, 2009 | Comments 0
| CommonDreams.org- Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) today introduced legislation that would narrow several provisions of the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, including the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA). Three sections of the Patriot Act – the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the “library records” provision and the “lone wolf” provision – are up for renewal this year and will expire on December 31 if Congress does not take action. The American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed the new bill, the JUSTICE Act, and calls on Congress to move quickly to pass it.
“Over the past eight years, Congress and the executive branch have allowed for more and more surveillance while doing little to protect Americans’ privacy rights,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The JUSTICE Act is a much needed remedy for the overbroad and out of control surveillance in our country. Given that three of the Patriot Act’s provisions expire at the end of the year, it’s vital that Congress pass the JUSTICE Act as quickly as it can so that proper action can be taken to protect Americans’ privacy rights.”
The JUSTICE Act would make vital changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act by inserting privacy and civil liberties safeguards into each law. The JUSTICE Act would amend the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act by establishing a standard of individualized suspicion, mandating meaningful judicial review and requiring thorough reporting on the FBI’s use of NSLs to Congress. The NSL provision of the Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI’s ability to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit bureaus without prior judicial approval and to impose gag orders on record demand recipients. The ACLU has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the amended NSL statute’s gag provisions in a lawsuit called Doe v. Holder. A lower court ruled in 2007 that NSL gag provisions were unconstitutional and in December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in part, agreeing that the NSL statute’s gag provision violated the First Amendment.
Full Story: Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act | CommonDreams.org.
Filed Under: Fascism, Police State, Authoritarianism
Comments (0)
-
Who will you vote for this year: Big Oil, Big Casinos, or Wall Street?
Billionaire hedge fund manager - and primary contributor to Rick Santorum's Red, White, and Blue SuperPAC - Foster Friess let the truth slip out about politics in this post-Citizens United age during an interview with Politico. Friess was among several billionaires who attended the Koch brothers secret meeting last month where over a hundred million dollars was pledged to beat President Obama.Trying to get other oligarchs on the side of Rick Santorum - Friess said, "There isn't a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system." The key word there: investment. These aren't campaign contributions - these are investments that millionaires and billionaires are making to keep their tax breaks, their subsidies, and their lax regulations in place.We no longer have actual people running for President - we have a few very, very rich people like Friess and the Kochs investing in stooges to do their bidding - and hoping to see major returns in their bank accounts. So who will you vote for this year? Big Oil, Big Casinos, or Wall Street?-Thom(Who will you vote for this year? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
-
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
