Thoughts on the Patriot Act. The rant really has no structure, I was just angrily typing. |
September 11th, 2001-- a date that--as FDR would have said--"...will live in infamy." The events of that day are truly tragic and should live on in our memories so long as we live. Now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to talk about the mass hysteria caused by 9/11 and the event that ensued. The single event that I'm referring to occurred on October 26, 2001. The establishment of the Patriot Act. After 9/11 many people were living in constant fear of terrorists, which is understandable considering 9/11 just happened. However I believe that people were so afraid of terrorists they had no problem allowing that red, white, and blue cock rape them of their rights. Granted laws are very long and boring things that are difficult to follow which is why we have elected representatives to read them for us, however they took advantage of that. There are now "sneak-and-peek" warrants which is basically something that allows the FBI to break into your house without your knowledge to gather evidence, they do have to get a warrant for this (which isn't difficult) however they still do not have to tell you they have a warrant to search your place, they are also allowed to take things as well. This falls under any federal law that is broken including a misdemeanor. Is that not a direct violation of our 4th amendment right? Most arrests under the Patriot Act are not even terror related, they are drug related. They can get pretty much any record of yours without a warrant or court order and yet this is still happening. So what do we do? Protest? I don't think that'd work because the only time we are free to protest is when they know it won't actually do anything. For example, take a look at Occupy Wall Street, dozens upon dozens of peaceful protesters were arrested and/or assaulted by the police until it just became too difficult for them to even protest. And then it got violent with Ferguson, but what do you really expect? JFK got it right, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Fear mongering can only work for so long. Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/nsa-attacks-thwarted_n_4148811.html http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/21/opinion/la-oew-mcneil-sanchez21-2009oct2... http://theweek.com/articles/459955/two-years-later-did-occupy-wall-street-make-d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneak_and_peek_warrant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#Title_I:_Enhancing_domestic_security_a... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/ten-years-later-look-three-scariest-provis... http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf |