Overall, I am comfortable with this. In a world with an Administration and subordinate agencies truly operating solely for the protection of this country I’d agree with the concept of surveillance that sometimes skirts the protections afforded by the Constitution.
However, given the record of this President and the statements before press and Congress by some of his agency head with regard to the level of surveillance, I am not in favor of that carte blanche FISA rubber stamp under the guise of national security from terrorism when the President himself won’t even acknowledge Islam as a systemic terrorism problem. In the words of Johnny Cochran, “...the glove just don’t fit!”
Frankly though, even if the act isn’t renewed, I suspect it won’t make a difference in actual practice. Obama and his agencies have already shown their allegiance is not to established law and the Constitution. They, especially the NSA, are designed for secrecy; they’ll just keep doing it, law or no law.
The only way to stop evil from utilizing our law(s) against us is to erase the law
We operated just fine for over two hundred years without the Patriot Act ... repealing it and/or letting it die will not kill us, nor leave some unrepairable rent in our fabric .... we are AMERICANS !
But who gets to decide when to skirt the Constitution? You? ME? the congress? the administration? the courts? Who?
Perhaps we might leave it up to the director of NSA?
No, let's just abide by it or alter it with a Constitutional amendment, not a con con, but an independent amendment.
There is one large problem...... the phone companies. Although the NSA can illegally request the phone company data, there is no guarantee nor evidence that the phone companies will continue to provide the data sans warrant in violation of the law
As I interpret the current results, NCIS will need a judge on staff to permit McGee to come up with phone records in a timely manner to prevent being smacked on the back of the head by Gibbs
Our problem is not just this president. Our national problem is the now evident truth that this elite group in Washington DC is all in the same bed. They intentionally support one another. I trust the GOP no more than the Democrats.
In this, Obama has now made the U. S. and its allies infinitely less safe—assisted in his mission by Rand & Co. Yes, we can all sleep easier now. Like hell we can.
The door to complete, ultra privacy slammed shut on 9/11. It will never open the same again despite the misguided and mangled attempts such as the present one.
The real rejoicing over this lethal action comes from Islamoterrorists who see once again that America is incapable of coming together, overcoming divisive individualism and posturing, to defend itself. They will attribute it all to Allah.
The collection of metadata to find connections between terrorists phones is hardly the reading of emails as the shouting claims. Will someone please explain just how terrorists can be identified by perpetually going to a court to seek permission to use the revamped program to somehow—somehow—identify yet unidentified millions of potential terrorists. How do you find a needle hidden in a haystack when you must first have permission to look for it by informing a judge or judges exactly where it is located?
All the expiration would do is require court approval to get the same information, a case at a time.