The PATRIOT Act is up for reauthorization.

SOURCE

Do we still need the PATRIOT Act, OT? Why, or why not?

Personally, I believe it goes against the Fourth Amendments provision that we be protected against unreasonable searches without a search warrant or probable cause. I don't believe it's reasonable to collect the phone calls of every American in the hopes that we could possibly find a terrorist.

Also, to **** with the NSA, and probably ensure my inability to get a federal LE job in the future, I'm going to mention the NSA every time I make a phone call. Just to be a dick about it. Until either the PATRIOT Act is scrapped, or the provision that allows this kind of dragnet surveillance is removed.

The government could still attempt to ensure our safety and security by following the Constitution but these schmucks want as much power as possible. 9/11 didn't happen because the country was light on laws and intrusion. It happened because the government dropped the ball.

Yeah down with invasion of privacy, I think we Americans have had enough of this crap already.

Have we? Nobody really talks about the NSA surveillance program(s) anymore.

I don't know, I'm much more cynical on the matter. I don't think the vast majority of people care.

It is important that the government balance our liberty/privacy with our security and its duty to protect U.S. citizens and those foreigners living or travelling in our territory from terrorist attacks. It probably won't get the balance write the first time, so every now and then the government will need to re-calibrate the laws and procedures when the pendulum swings too far in one direction or the other. Congress and the citizenry must have their input, it can't just be up to the executive branch, and this should be an area where intelligent and principled debate supersedes party-loyalties. It is good that the Patriot Act is not permanent but must periodically be renewed, but I do not really know the details about the law and as such I do not take a firm position on it.

I'm not a fan. Then again people seem apathetic to government intervention.

should it be reauthorized in it's current form? no,

will it be?

You can certainly have opinions on certain parts of it. For instance section 215 which gives the NSA the authority to collect every phone call made in, and to, the United States.

@airshocker: When you're on the phone, you better talk real slow so NSA and Obama don't know.

Is that content or "just the meta-data"? Either way, I'm erring against that section. It seems excessive.

Who knows. At this point, we can't even trust what our elected officials tell us with regards to it. They told us they wouldn't do that sort of thing when it first passed and then we find out they have PRISM.

I think the safest course is to take that authority away from the agency entirely.

yo **** dat

@comp_atkins said:

should it be reauthorized in it's current form? no,

will it be?

You never know. It could go both ways: Obama has nothing to lose, so he could either sign off on it, or veto it.

more like the Traitor Act

I wanna see how the Senate votes, specially the so called "Young Turks" in Paul, Rubio and Cruz. Time to put up, or shut up guys. Plus Little Chief Warren and socialist Sanders.

I'm not an expert, I suspect some parts of it are perfectly reasonable and constitutional, but if I had to vote up and down I would vote nay.

It doesn't matter. They will spy on us with or without the patriot act.

the patriot act really gave me leeway for police forces to invade our privacy, more so than the government; this is true because the government was violating our privacy since as early as they technologically could have.

They're too concerned of wondering what filters are the best to use in their self photos and post them online. These are probably the same people who never do any research and ask what a certain thing means when they could just go to Google in a touch of a button or two. Oh and they post a lot of motivational quotes, can't forget those.

I'm pro wire tapping.

They don't actually record calls, the record who everybody contacts.

But if you start contacting known terrorists you probably will get tapped, but at that points it's probable cause.

I always thought it had to do with people carrying large amounts of currency around. Like that they would check you if you did.

You're pro wiretapping without probable cause?

No, that would be a huge waste of resources.

But, I think tracking phone records is fine.

The thing is though, how do you know that's what they're doing?

I was unaware that allowing unwaranted searches and surveilance was an act of patriotism.

As much as I hate the violation of privacy...we live in the age of internet. People post information about them available to public via Twitter, Forums, Myspace, Facebook, instagram,...

I wouldn't think NSA have the resources to listen to all 300 million citizens. I bet Phone calls are collected through voice recognition keywords.- meaning if someone mention certain keywords like Bomb, type of C4, etc... they will be put in the watch list, filtering their data to be more manageable. Come to think about it, working for NSA must be a sucky job. Imagine you go to work and all you hear is about how:

"That Party was a 'bomb', I had a great time!"

"Or why didn't you plant the C4 in that building, because of that we lost the Team death match"

"You want to plant a bunch of C4's next to the beach tomorrow? and start murdering people" (Implying about GTAV)

Thousands to millions....I'll go crazy listening

I don't.

Then you really shouldn't be okay with any of it.

The problem with the NSA is that it's unaccountable. So long as that remains the case, we'll get different iterations of PRISM. They'll just change the name.

That's a difficult issue to be honest. America is continually having to watch closely to protect it's citizens against the ever increasing threat of violent extremism, especially from the growing ISIS threat and other middle eastern groups. They often have to walk a fine line between freedom and protection. Cut back to much and people can lose their lives, push to hard and people's freedoms can be violated. Given the incredible job we've seen since 9/11 in the lack of an significant terrorist attacks (Boston bombing being the exception) it's clear the United States government has adequately protected the lives of it's citizens from terrorism and many attempted acts of violence have been foiled. You would have to look closely at what would happen if the Patriot act were to be dismembered. Would it make it more difficult to track and eliminate potential terrorists stateside? I'm not privy to that information but I hope congress does what it needs to do to continue protecting American lives at home. If they can do so without the patriot act, then be gone with it. If not, it should probably stay.

Patriot is in the name. It must be good...

I guess there'll have to be another false flag terrorist attack within the next few months.

With the pretext of using it to arm Ukraine of course. Got to start building up arms to the inevitable invasion of Russia obviously.

they don't have protecting you from 'terrorists' as their goal, in fact lots of times the terrorists they stop only got to where they were because they set them up with the tools in the first place....its bait.

In theory I'm against it, but it's hard to care honestly.

I think people have to choose between liberty and security. To live in a free society you simply have to deal with the fact that some criminals will go free because of a court system that demands guilt rather than innocence be proven. You also have to deal with the fact some disturbed people may commit mass murder because no action could be taken against them until they committed the crime, including violation of their privacy rights. That's the price of freedom. If people don't want to pay it that's fine but as long as they know what they are giving up.

It will be interesting to see who votes to reauthorize is it, which I think will absolutely happen. The question I think is will there be any major revisions to it, like getting rid of the mass collection of data that happens within the country.

Did someone say... PATRIOT!?

@dylandr said:

Did someone say... PATRIOT!?

War machine was cooler.

@Serraph105: me and my gang are even cooler!

It is time to abolish the Patriot Act.

@airshocker: Just saw this picture online today and it made me think of this topic. It sure is relevant to what we're discussing here and I bet you'll get a kick out of it

Here's the source where I saw it from: https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeIntel/posts/920377341348262:0

I agree with you.

@whipassmt: I'm trying to figure out what point that you think this brings up? Should we always consider what Mark Twain would have thought before we allow the government to do something? Is it that the government today wouldn't even trust a particularly famous author? I sorta doubt they would trust him back then either.

Should we implicitly trust the wisdom of J. K. Rowling due to her fame? Or should we only extend that sort of trust to American authors like George R. R. Martin? If so then why?

I don't think it's necessarily that people don't care, but they that they have much more immediate problems to worry about. Money issues, family issues, health, those types of tings. Also, government surveillance is something they don't actually see and most people don't feel the effects of. That doesn't mean it's OK, but that people tend to not worry about it. Out of sight out of mind. Like a lot of problems in American society, it's going to take a large catastrophe for people to start actively caring about it.

I agree with your post, but LOL MySpace.

There is a terrorist on the Internet. We don't know who it is, so let's monitor everyone.

There is a spider in my house. I don't know where the spider is, so let's burn the house down.

It's time to abolish this corporate driven bullshit. Down with the failure known as the patriot act.

@Serraph105: I just liked the cartoon and thought it was funny, fit in with the topic, and that Airshocker would like it too.

Just tracking meta data from phone calls tells a lot about people.

I can see why the police wants (if they can not do so themselves) someone to store this, as it can come useful under investigations.

Maybe some of the larger departments want the information, but most don't. That's also assuming that the NSA would even share.