Applequest wrote:
Dont cause an accident and youll have nothing to worry about. It cracks me up when people get all bent out of shape about so-called privacy infringements. Remember how the Patriot Act was supposed to ruin our lives? Oh wait, unless you are doing terrorist things you have nothing to worry about. The more things that make life easier for good, law-abiding citizens the better. I'm sorry you wont be able to go drive around at 100 MPH, get into an accident, and be able to lie about how fast you were going anymore.
A little closed minded... and a little inaccurate, or at least uninformed.
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In September 2003, the New York Times reported on a case of the USA PATRIOT Act being used to investigate alleged potential drug traffickers without probable cause. The article also mentions a study by Congress that referenced hundreds of cases where the USA PATRIOT Act was used to investigate non-terrorist alleged future crimes. The New York Times reports that these non-terrorist investigations are relevant because President Bush and several members of Congress stated that the purpose the USA PATRIOT Act was that of investigating and preempting potential terrorist acts.
This is also seen by some as a violation of constitutional rights as Defined in Article One of the United States Constitution which states, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." Prohibiting a bill of attainder means that the US Congress cannot pass a law which deems a specific person or group guilty and then punish them. Prohibiting an ex post facto law (Latin - literally - after the fact) means that the US Congress cannot make any given act a crime (or a more serious crime) after the time when that act has been committed. It is arguable that this applies to some uses of the Patriot Act and those who watch the Supreme Court are waiting for a case to make its way up so that the judges can rule on it.
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In November 2005, Business Week reported that the FBI had issued tens of thousands of "National Security Letters" and had obtained one million financial records from the customers of targeted Las Vegas businesses. Selected businesses included casinos, storage warehouses and car rental agencies. An anonymous Justice official claimed that such requests were permitted under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Actand despite the volume of requests insisted "We are not inclined to ask courts to endorse fishing expeditions". This didn't just include financial records, but credit records, employment records, and in some cases, health records.
Furthermore, this information is databased and maintained indefinitely by the FBI. Previous legislation required that federal law enforcement destroy any records harvested during an investigation that pertained to anyone deemed innocent. The Patriot Act superseded that and now the records are maintained indefinitely. According to the legislation, they may be "shared with third-parties where appropriate" yet nowhere in the legislation does it define who these third parties are or what conditions would be deemed appropriate for the sharing of such records.
The large scale wiretapping and tracing of calls to and from foreign countries also falls under this. Millions of phone records were harvested, fed into a database and were searched for patterns of calling to and from numbers of known terrorists. To date, there have been no announced arrests from this program.
Public libraries have been asked to turn over their records for specific terminals. A few have filed suit, because the National Security Letters that they were presented with were very sweeping, demanding information not just on the individual under investigation, but on everyone who had used specific terminals at the libraries during given time windows. Since many of the users in one case were minor children, one library felt that it had an obligation to notify the parents. The FBI has disagreed and the case is now working its way through the court system.
A National Security Letter can be issued by any FBI agent with the rank of Field Supervisor or above, at their discretion. It does not require a judge or probable cause, as does a search warrant.
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In May 2004, Professor Steve Kurtz of the University at Buffalo reported his wife's death of heart failure. The associate art professor, who works in the biotechnology sector, was using benign bacterial cultures and biological equipment in his work. Police arriving at the scene found the equipment (which had been displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America) suspicious and notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The next day the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Department of Homeland Security and numerous other law enforcement agencies arrived in HAZMAT gear and cordoned off the block surrounding Kurtz's house, impounding computers, manuscripts, books, and equipment, and detaining Kurtz without charge for 22 hours; the Erie County Health Department condemned the house as a possible "health risk" while the cultures were analyzed. Although it was determined that nothing in the Kurtz's home posed any health or safety risk, the Justice Department sought charges under Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act—a law which was expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. A grand jury rejected those charges, but Kurtz is still charged with federal criminal mail and wire fraud, and faced 20 years in jail before the charges were dropped. Supporters worldwide argue that this is a politically motivated prosecution, akin to those seen during the era of McCarthyism, and legal observers note that it is a precedent-setting case with far-reaching implications involving the criminalization of free speech and expression for artists, scientists, researchers, and others.
Point made? It doesn't have to ruin YOUR life or be a case that interrupts your prime time television for it to have real, lasting, and devastating effects on completely real and completely innocent people.
Benjamin Franklin wrote:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I guess the question is... Do you really trust that, even if they are not affecting you now, there can be no elected official ever who would seriously misuse these powers that are now "legal"? Would you be willing to hedge the bet of your name, sanity, or life that the "Advanced Interrogation Techniques" utilized on so-called "Terrorists", permitted to be utilized without making an actual charge or without evidence or court orders, will never be turned on you?
I guess you can, if you obey every whim of the Federal Government. What if the people breaking Federal Law in Washington where Marijuana is now legal are SWAT-teamed, held prisoner or sent to Guantanamo Bay under PATRIOT act or the new NDAA?
The National Defense Authorization Act 2012 was signed into law by the president in the wee hours of New Year's, after promising not to sign it without the removal of provisions which allowed the indefinite detention of American Citizens without charging them or taking them to trial.
That is to say that you no longer technically have to go through the court system to be disappeared to prison. Since the passage of this Act a trial by jury is no longer guaranteed to anyone the US wishes to imprison - there's a "loophole", more or less. It gets worse - Michigan Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and co-sponsor of the NDAA, stood on the floor of the Senate and made the claim that the Obama administration actually demanded the provisions be there, despite the president's claim that he opposed the provisions and would not sign it as-is.
The NDAA was blocked by Judge Katherine Forrest earlier this year, but it was appealed and the government won back the right to arrest you without charging you.
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The headlines? Lawyers for the US government, given several chances by Judge Forrest to do so, would not rule out detaining Chris Hedges under the NDAA for reporting,; they would not rule out defining a political book as providing ‘material support’ for terrorists. The Government, given multiple chances by Judge Forrest to do so, also would not or could not give any direct definition of who is included in the phrase ‘associated forces’, or what any example of what it means to ‘provide material support.” And the government did not dispute the validity of a DHS memo that tried to target Occupy Wall St as cyberterrorists.
Other controversies that actually directly affect your rights as a United States Citizen who is under suspicion of ANYTHING include the targeted Drone-bombing of two United States citizens overseas in Yemen, Anwar Al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman (on a second trip specifically for him, just so he can join his daddy. Isn't that sweet?).
And this President has a Nobel Peace Prize on his wall. I get the feeling he probably licks it every time he orders a drone strike. Wonder what the next one will do with these powers?
So now you are informed. If you have not heard of any of these issues, you have not properly investigated the actual scenario present in reality.
If everything looks fine, it must be fine, right? That's what most of the people in 1930's Germany thought. They fell for war propaganda after someone (historians disagree on whether or not he had Nazi assistance or worked alone) burned down the German Parliament Building (Reichstag Fire) and were taken on a wild ride of invasion and eradication that ended with many of their own people.
We have the internet now, and you can access information both sponsored and opposed by the State thanks to the free flow of information.
The S may never Hit The Fan, but the laws on the books make it really easy for it to happen. Having privacy advocates constantly riding the Fed is the only thing keeping them from taking every single invasive action they want. Can you imagine if no one spoke out about anything? If no one fought government control? Alcohol prohibition sucked, right? The plain and simple fact is that these laws suck and are not effective and bypass the protections our forefathers set up for our freedom. We are allowing the current government in the United States of America to run out of control and destroy the Citizen-Protecting Framework that was literally the driving revolutionary idea that formed this country and changed the world.
I like my life and my freedom, so I must inherently love and cherish my privacy when under the control of power hungry lunatics disassociated from the needs and challenges of 90+% of the country. And one final statement about "having nothing to hide"... It's estimated by some (there's a fantastic book about it named "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent") that the average American citizen commits three Federal felonies per day in the course of usual financial transactions. If you think you have nothing to hide, I'd challenge you to request an investigation and see what kind of charges they could make up for you, if I thought they would even take you seriously.
bartoron 
. They should enforce the rules/ laws already in place before they "try" to protect us anymore. 
Yeah!" to taking back our country if someone (Chinese in this case) is attempting to take over. We are not push overs. Also depending how far they go will determine just how far we would go to have what is ours. Every American would be justified in doing so, and