re: #265 Daniel Ballard

I put bold on the key point in your quote. What is out of hand is how quickly they are deliberately “misused”, like the Patriot act and FISA. By misused I mean by going from anti terror or anti smuggling, they begin to be used for ordinary law enforcement. But the new tech is really an effective workaround of civil protections. Uses unspoken at deployment. The Patriot act needs a massive restriction-Anti terror only or a sunset clause that has impact.

The Patriot act is used in counter terror only 15% of the time. GPS tech became an instant warrant-less tracking device to be used at will. On mere investigative whims. Enough so ordinary people just find them on their cars. (Most of this is sourced from Wired dot com)

Possibly. Wired is a reasonable source but they do have a strong libertarian streak when it comes to things like this. I haven’t investigated enough to form an opinion but I suspect a lot of the Patriot Act criticisms are a bit overblown but that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious issues.