Ken Nelson

 
Or Privacy SHOULD not be a crime

With Utah just trying, and failing, to do its own Patriot Act for all crimes, I thought it appropriate to look at the Patriot Act, which is up for renewal now.

I’m inclined to not like laws claiming to be patriotic. Nor laws that have names that are really acronyms: Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act

Note that name specifically includes terrorism ONLY.  I do think we need to fight terrorism hard. My main problem with the Patriot Act is that it doesn’t JUST fight terrorism. It also permits intrusive law enforcement techniques for drugs, money laundering, computer crime, border, and crime in general.

And in action most of the uses of the law have NOT been for terrorism. Not just most, nearly all.  For instance, of the 763 sneak and peak warrants used in 2008 only 3 were used for anti-terrorism. 65 percent were used for drug enforcement. And that leaves about 34% for “other” crimes.

I do not support fishing expeditions, like the BLANKET requests  for records on all customers of a number of Las Vegas businesses.

I do not support imprisoning over 200 people under this act for petty crimes committed on airliners. They weren’t terrorists.

This is so like government to use fear of one thing to spur invasive activity in another.

So, in a nutshell, I favor renewing a modified Patriot Act, limited to JUST terrorism.

Frankly, I think the law hasn’t helped anti-terrorism much and I’d be happy to see it die if that was what was needed to kill the non-terrorism stuff in it.

But if we can start over and craft a simple bill FOCUSED on terrorism and not containing every wish list the Federal law enforcement bureaucracy wants to use against citizens, then I’d support it.

Lacking that, I’d just as soon say sayonara to the PATRIOT Act and hello to the POTO (Prevention of Terrorism Only) Act.