As Expected, House Agrees To Extend Patriot Act With No Discussion, No Oversight

from the civil-liberties? dept

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We all knew last week, when the House failed to renew three controversial clauses in the Patriot Act that allow the government to spy on people with little oversight, that it was a temporary reprieve. Indeed, just a week later, with a slight procedural change, the same provision has been approved , and now it moves to the Senate, where there are three separate bills for extending these clauses (and none about getting rid of them, as was supposed to have happened by now). Only one of the three bills, put forth by Senator Patrick Leahy, includes additional oversight. The two others -- from Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Dianne Feinstein -- do not include any oversight.But, really, we should be asking why these provisions are being extended at all. The reason for allowing them in the original Patriot Act was that they were "needed" in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks. But they were put forth with clear sunset provisions, recognizing that those three provisionsbe the norm. Over the years, there has been tremendous evidence of abuse of the Patriot Act, well beyond its intended purposes, so at the very least, there should be much greater oversight. But, even worse, when these provisions were extended last year, thefor extending them was that there wasn't enough time to debate the provisions. So the one year extension was supposed to be. Yet no debate happened. Hell, nohappened. Instead, everyone waited, and when the deadline came, they just agreed to push the deadline out further (and Grassley's plan is to push it out forever).Shouldn't we be askingthere's been no public discussion or debate on the need for these provisions? To date, the extent of the "discussion" has been to have various thinktanks make statements in support of these provisions that are either misleading or flat-out false . Don't the American people deserve better?In the meantime, if you'd like to see if your elected representative voted in favor of the extension, you can see the roll call tally of all the votes. I'm happy to see my Rep. voted against it (after abstaining last round).

Filed Under: house, oversight, patriot act