Friday, December 16, 2005

And some good news: the PATRIOT Act reauthorization has failed

The Senate roll call vote is here. Unless a reauthorization passes, various provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act set to expire after three years will expire on December 31, 2005. These provisions include roving wiretaps, the ability to obtain certain kinds of business records without a court order, expansion of wiretap capabilities, certain kinds of sharing between agencies of information obtained via wiretap, etc. The specific details of what was in the Senate bill and the corresponding House bill may be found here (PDF).

Some of the pieces of these bills were beneficial, e.g., placing a sunset provision on the use of National Security Letters, which predated USA PATRIOT and which do not currently have an expiration date. Others extended provisions due to sunset on December 31, 2005 to 2006 or later years. (The ACLU has a lawsuit against the constitutionality of National Security Letters.)

The vote was 52-47; 60 votes were needed to end the filibuster. 2 Democrats and 50 Republicans voted yes, 41 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and one independent voted no.

Arizona: McCain and Kyl both voted yes.

UPDATE (March 25, 2007): The link for the ACLU's lawsuit on National Security Letters is stale, you can now find that information here.

6 comments:

Einzige said...

Undoubtedly all the red state fascists will call this "a setback in the War On Islamic Extremism".

(I don't usually like to reference Lew Rockwell, but when he's right, he's right.)

Einzige said...

Whoa!

Welcome to the fray, Maureen!

I didn't see you there.

Einzige said...

I should mention that we here at The Lippard Blog are critical thinkers, so we'd really appreciate it if - around here anyway - you became as a critical thinker, too.

Lippard said...

Maureen, I think you're a troll. If by some chance you're actually not, see 1 Cor. 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12, Ephesians 5:4, Colossians 3:8 and 4:6, 1 Timothy 4:12, Exodus 20:7, and Proverbs 13:3. The first two verses are about the role of women in the church and in the instruction of men (prohibited!), the rest are about proper language and conversation.

Lippard said...

Randy:

I'd rather live in a society where I have liberty and there are clear limits and restrictions on the power of government than one that promotes "security" over liberty and supplies neither.

The intelligence failings that led to 9/11 were severe, and were not caused by a lack of legal powers. If Louis Freeh had used the money allocated for updating the FBI's computer systems for that purpose, instead of diverting tens of millions of dollars designated for computer upgrades to hiring additional agents and continuing to have a hodge-podge of early 1980's computer systems and databases that couldn't be correlated with each other, the FBI very well may have been able to prevent 9/11.

As Benjamin Franklin put in the front of one of the books he published (it's on the title page of _An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania_, London, 1759), "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
(http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader$605)

Einzige said...

Randy,

I think the assumptions that more security is "good" for us and that the attack would have been prevented had the PATRIOT act been in force in 2001 are both highly questionable.

Your assertion that we are pansies - aside from being entirely irrelevant - is incorrect. I'm quite certain that Jim or I would beat you in a fight.