I said that it was harmless, not toothless. We need it because it has provisions that force banks to tighten their monetary security, and we need it because our law enforcement needs to be tracking wire transfers into and out of suspect foreign nations.
Your problem is that you are railing against something that you haven't even read. Someone told you that the Patriot Act is bad, and you dutifully repeated their mantra without checking to see for yourself *what* specifically was bad about it.
And the answer is that *nothing* is bad about the Patriot Act except its bad press.
Come back after you've read it, and if you find a single harmful sentence in its entire legal code, flag me.
Until then, you might reconsider your opposition to it.
Oh, one more thing: law enforcement *still* has to get a court order for "secret" searches, even under the Patriot Act, contrary to the uninformed drivel that gets posted around here...