Ben Franklin's spinning in his grave
Bush is pressing for the renewal of the USA Patriot Act.
I go out on a limb here: America's most childishly-named law isn't 100% bad. I believe that the FBI and the CIA should be able to share information. This is a no-brainer, yes? But nation-wide search warrants? No. Fuck no. I wouldn't even trust the alternate universe's Gore administration with my fourth amendment, much less these trigger-happy clowns.
Can't the FBI and the CIA share information without all this other crap going along with it? Seriously, am I missing something?
posted by Marie Antoinette at 12:15 AM
3 Comments:
Haven't you heard? They've renamed it "Freedom pie."
USA PATRIOT Act stands for
“United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"
Concise language...now I understand (borrowing some of Summer's sarcasam)
The CIA is charged with gathering intelligence, mainly on external threats to US security. The FBI is charged with internal police investigation. Then there is the NSA. Most people are not aware that the NSA is the largest US intelligence agency. SHould the FBI and CIA share intelligence? I do not recall, off-hand, the reasons why they were not permitted, by law, to do so, but the no-brainer in this is that, if they were specifically forbidden from doing it, then there was some reason that made sense. The notion of yet another layer of intelligence bureaucracy to sift the various pieces from all the agencies to figure out what is really going on, though, does make sense. It should be an agency with no investigative powers at all and should have a small budget. It should only be analysts.
As for the rest, scrap the Patriot Act. We have a Constitution for a reason. 9/11 did not change everything. 9/11 was an abberation.
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