Currently, the US has 16 major intelligence agencies, and over 100 federal police agencies. And because of a relatively new change in the law, non-police federal agencies may now procure and use weapons and even set up their own SWAT-like enforcement teams.
The most notorious use of these so far was when the Department of Education sent a SWAT team to arrest a woman who was in default of her student loan, breaking into the home of her ex-husband, who lived there with their child, but not the woman. The accusation against her was of student loan fraud, for concealing assets that could have been used to pay off her loan. Typically a civil offense.
And credit where credit is due. Though Obama and his bureaucracy are using it, these authoritarian police agencies were for the most part given broad and unconstitutional authorities under George W. Bush, who, while he was correct in taking the War on Terror to our foreign enemies, devoted just as many resources to creating a police state in the US, against its honest citizenry.
It will take decades of concerted action to dismantle this nightmare, and to set up deep constraints on the government against ever doing such things again.
I don't think so. As time goes by this will ONLY get worse. Totalitarians don't give up their power a little at a time until it's gone the way once free American's have given up their freedom. Communism can't be undone incrementally. It fails by either total collapse or war.
Some of the libertarians in this forum warned of this when Bush signed the National Security Act but were generally reviled as un-American.
No need to say "told ya' so."
You are exactly right! Doofus, dumb-ass, dumber than dirt, GW Bush, laid the groundwork or passed the laws, enabling just about every abuse & atrocity being committed today by 0dumb0 & his fascist gubmint! So in addition to destroying the Repub party and giving us 0dumb0, GW Bush laid the groundwork for a totalitarian dictatorial federal gubmint!
Way to go, doofus, dumbass GW Bush! His legacy continues to live on!
I'm convinced these measures were a put-up job sold to Bush under the stress of (his) trying to prevent a recurrence of a big terrorist strike in the U.S. .... by people with further agenda, who did not fully disclose their intentions for these new powers and assets. People like, oh, the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street playmates, like elite players at CFR and the Chamber, and so on and so on, and other people with a vested interest in helotizing the American People.
I was afraid at the time, fears fully realized now, that laws like the Patriot Act would prove very empowering to would-be despots like Obama and his gang.