Unlike its hastily passed predecessor, the Justice Department's wide-ranging follow-up to the Patriot Act of 2001 is already facing intense scrutiny, just days after a civil rights group posted a leaked version of the legislation on its website.

The act allows the government to:

* Conduct domestic wiretapping without court order for 15 days following a congressional authorization of use of force or an attack on the United States.

* Secretly detain citizens.

* Deport any alien, including green-card holders, who are convicted of drug possession or an aggravated felony.

Read the entire article

* Access a citizen's credit reports without a subpoena.

* Abolish federal court "consent decrees" that limit police surveillance of non-criminal organizations and public events.

* Criminalize the use of encryption software in the commission or planning of a felony.

* Apply strict gag rules to those subpoenaed by a grand jury.

* Collect DNA from suspected terrorists and indeed from any individual whose DNA might assist terror investigations.

* Extend authorization periods for secret wiretaps and Internet surveillance.

* Ease restrictions on the use of secret evidence.

McCarthy Lives!

My dad dodged the vietnam draft and moved to Canada. Does this qualify him as a terrorist?

Oh yea! He's got a big beard too! WATCH OUT AMERICA!

McCarthy lives is right.
There's only one point in that entire article that I agree with. Everything else is either a gross invasion of privacy (points 1,4,5,8 and 9), unconstitutional (points 2 and 10), or just plain idiotic (points 6 and 7).
You can tell which one I actually approve of, but that's even questionable as I don't think the people charged would get a fair hearing in this atmosphere of paranoia.

Yet another point on how governmental and corporate behavior influence each other (the RIAA-Verizon battle being the next exhibit).

God help us! Oh yeah, seperation of church and state. Somebody help us!

[zombie voice]We must obey the government! We must obey the government! We must obey the government! Death to terrorists! Death to terrorists! Death to terrorists![/zombie voice]

I lived in Chile as a small child. We where under military rule and no one was allowed on the streets after 10 pm. They would shoot you! Those expiriences stuck with me and I am disgusted with the way this country is heading. It is becoming apparent that Osama has succeeded in changing our way of life for the worst. How can we possibly be a voice for freedom when we are willing to destroy are own? What the hell is wrong with this gilded administration? The constitution seems unimportant to them. at least we get to have the fun of pulling ourselves out of this quagmire(could take years). This tack taken by our governing body spits on the graves of those who have fallen in the pursuit of the American ideal. BTW read the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" I wonder if they now this text is turning into the administrations playbook? This was broughtto my attention by a mathmatics professor, checked it out he's not far off base.

Next step is "Troika court". This is tecnique used by Stalin to ease and accelerate the extermination of anyone who was for freedom. It goes like that:three guys from NKVD(KGB) and group of soldiers coming to your house, taking you to local communist party office, tell you the offences you have commited(or not, who cares) sentence you to 20 years in the gulag or(more often)death punishment and execute you on the place.Hail AMERICA!

I`m afraid this is the way our corporate controlled government is heading, they don`t want to hear from us anymore so they`re just shutting out our civil rights, this should be even more of a sign why we need to take a stand now. Every Anti-terrorism bill being whisped through congress right now is underlined with fine print to take away our rights.

I feel that this goes way too far. People need to have some privacy. They can still reduce terrorism, but respect privacy.

At least the TIA is being studied for privacy implications. I also bet this will lead to a backlash of stronger encryption algorithms that the government cannot crack easily.

I hope this act fails, or gets challenged in court. I bet it will be challenged, if it passed.

I admire the recent quote I have seen: "Certainty leads to violence." This quotation regards religious zealots. I initially hoped some questioning in the Ashcroft Confirmation would flush out his religious lunacy, but alas, he has turned out to be worse than possibly anticipated.

We are witnessing full scale assault on abortion, Miranda, habeas corpus, and faith-based Federal program funding.

Separation of church and state is getting serious. I am ever-alert for more censorship initiatives from McCain, Hatch, Hollings and the like, spurred on by FCC Commissioner Copps. They are gunning for Hollywood and games creators, and you haven't even begun to witness censorship yet.

Brace yourselves. My belief is this is why Hilary Rosen quit and we will see the same retirement of Jack "The Ripper" Valenti. Their long-standing affirmation of free speech rights WILL BE TRADED for legislation limiting P2P file sharing. You get the pont? I will restate it. All legislation is horse traded, one thing for another.

We will see FCC commissioner Copps on a McCarty-ism tear, hearings on sex, and he will trade legislation for stifling P2P.

A LONG HISTORY exists that corporations wield the weapon of sex censorship to wipe out smaller competitors; such as Rupert Murdoch's English newspapers that publish naked girls on page three while simultaneously deploring filth and ruining politcians for their peccadilloes.

This game Wm. Randolph Hearst refined to a fever pitch, with "yellow journalism." He dominated politics and free speech with his Nazi sympathizer views for fifty years.

Hearst was the power backer of Will Hays Code, and along with Joe Kennedy & J. Edgar Hoover, creating the anti-Semeitic McCarthy Hearings, and continues to this day with the Valenti controlled movie code.

Please note that major studios have no problems passing the R Ratings, and it is applied against indie film-makers by a backroom anonymous group of censors,and no appeal is possible. The GOVERNMENT will soon be in charge of Correct Thinking---censoring the worse offender, games business, but everything else is fair game, (movies and music), and especially the internet.

The Government actually succeeded in the fifties in wiping out the comic book industry.

How is it that we have come to this? Remember how you feel after reading this article when you are asked to vote for your leaders. If you don't choose then the choice is already made for you. Excercise your right to vote before they take that away from us too. Fight for what you belive in before there's no reason to fight at all.

One of the reasons I am in Canada now is because of what our O-So-Beautiful and Wise government has done. I'm not even covering what they did in Guiana -- my friends are refugees from the dictatorship that was installed there.
--------------------
1953:
* U.S overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran.
* U.S then installs Shah as dictator.
---
1954:
* U.S overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala.
* 200,000 civilians killed during the process.
---
1963:
* U.S backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem.
1963-1975:
* U.S military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
---
September 11, 1973:
* U.S stages coup in Chile.
* Democratically-elected President Salvador Allende assassinated.
* Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed.
* At least 5000 Chileans murdered.
---
1977:
* U.S backs military rulers of El Salvador.
* 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed.
---
1980's:
* U.S trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets.
* The C.I.A gives them $3 billion.
---
1981:
* Reagan administration trains and funds the "Contras".
* 30,000 Nicaraguans are killed.
---
1982:
* U.S provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
* White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
---
1989:
* C.I.A agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington.
* U.S invades Panama and removes Noriega.
* 3,000 Panamanian civilian deaths.
---
1990:
* Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S.
* U.S invades Iraq.
* Bush (the old one) reinstates dictator of Kuwait.
---
1998:
* Clinton bombs alleged "Weapons Factory" in Sudan.
* "Weapons Factory" turns out to be making Aspirin.
---
1991 to present:
* American & British planes bomb Iraq on a near-weekly basis.
* United Nations estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
---
2000-01:
* U.S gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid."
---
September 11, 2001:
* Osama bin Laden uses his expert C.I.A training to murder 3000 people in New York.
---

The new Bush then declares war on Terrorism, as if our political leaders haven't terrorized the world enough already.

It would seem to me that the only terrorism the actual *world* has to fear is from us, the United States. After seeing Bowling For Columbine (the source of those quotes), I looked up those numbers and events and found out the truth for myself...

We do not have a pretty, or glorious, history at all. When I went to school, we had these Veteran's Day ceremonies, and one saying always resounded throughout my head.

"Lest we forget."

It would seem that all we ever do is Forget our mistakes, and let yet another rhetoric-spewing Politician with a forked tongue send all our youth off to die needlessly and create more hate in the world, while he himself lies in the lap of luxury -- safe from all the fighting and strife he has created.

Isn't it great? I knew this kind of legislation was coming eventually.

Here's to hoping all turns out for the best in the end.

I dont get the "national interests"policy that all US government is talking so proudly about. If the whole nation is against government laws and policy, where is the "US democracy". And US is not the only country with nationla interests in the world, so why others should shut up and obey?And if 1 billion chinese have the opposite "national interest" than US, that would be very democratic to give them some rights. Government is talking about countries like Iraq(i personally supporting strike on Iraq, but not because "war on terror', but because that crasy son of a bitch has too much chemical weaponary, and he used it and will use it against civillians)helping and supporting terrorists, while CIA gone further and trained terrorists themselves.But no, it's "US national interest".
And us military isn't the strongest in the world.It was proven in Korea and Vietnam.It's indeed the strongest army in the wordl-just before the first 10000 us soldiers die and brought back in zink coffins. It will be proved again in Afghanistan. Right now, Army officials and politicians with their loyal CNN's telling'the things are ok in Afghan'Soviets made the same mistake in 1980's, they tried to make Afghanistan a civilizied(and communist)country.Now US forces trying to make Afghan a democratic country, and you can already see,Us soldiers began to die.Us forces will lose that war, because there is one way to fight with Afghanese partisans:total destruction.No prisoners. If the group of partisans hide in the village, burn it with napalm,kill the partisans families,burn their houses.Because you cant make civilized war(if something like that still exists)in Afghanistan.

2 Lostep:
Great list!

"Those who would give up an essential liberty for a little security deserves neither liberty nor security"
-Benjamin Franklin

Creepy....too bad no one heeds that advice anymore. I'll have this on my epitaph once the Orwellian future (1984) occurs