And that's another of my objections. The PA was sold to the public to protect us from terrorists, when in fact it was a general prosecutorial wish list that never would have been passed at any other time.
The patriot act is designed to fix many of the problems with out methods of gathering intelligence. The majority of those changes were designed to deal with terrorism and national security. However, it's foolish to think that the legislature should address a problem as widespread as money laundering, but restrict changes to the law to terrorism.
Our technology had far surpassed the law in that area. If we had reason to suspect someone was laundering money, we still had to know which fincial institution they were using to do it in order to get a warrant.
We didn't just need evidence to show a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was happening, but the government needed to already know how and where it was being done.
So when congress took a look at this, they decided to address the issue and not just limit it to terrorism.
These provisions on money laundering weren't hidden. The fact that the addressed money laundering in general, not just terrorism related money laundering was clearly spelled out.
If Congress didn't want those provisions put in law, they could ammend them out.
The law also needs to be reauthorized, and I haven't seen anything in the bills to reauthorize it that would lead me to believe that there is a significant part of congress that wants those provisions removed.