The parts of the Patriot Act that rankle

• The Bush administration has fostered a good deal of national anxiety by its simple refusal to release information allaying public fears about how the act is being implemented.
  Immediately after Sept. 11, many Americans seemed to fall victim to an understandable fallacy:
• We believed that by surrendering our freedoms, we were buying national security. Slowly the haze of fear has cleared, and Americans have begun to demand that the freedoms we surrender correspond directly to national security. The parts of the Patriot Act that rankle most are those provisions that sweep normal criminal law enforcement under the looser procedural standards for fighting terror. It's important that the state be able to fight terror. No one disputes this.
• But it's equally important that the state not use the war on terror to gut the warrant requirement or undermine the First Amendment.
• The best check on such encroachments should be a free and objective judiciary. But many of the most disturbing Patriot provisions do away with judicial oversight altogether, while others permit judges to act as rubber stamps in ex parte proceedings—that is, hearings where only the government side is represented.
• The next best check on such encroachments is public scrutiny; that scrutiny is only beginning to be as demanding and impatient as it ought. But most Americans still do not believe that Patriot has in any way affected them. So it's worth noting that many of these provisions are used frequently—even if details are blacked out. Go back and look at the sections that ask whether you'd know if Patriot has been used against you. In most cases the answer is no. We really can be safe without being afraid of our government. It simply requires that security measures be narrowly tailored to fit national security needs. Some parts of the USA Patriot Act meet this test. Some do not. And some are purely opportunistic.
• 
  The Patriot Act's Sections 215 and 505 allow the federal government to require voluminous and often sensitive records without public judicial oversight or other meaningful checks on the government's power.Compliance with the demands puts confidential financial data, trade secrets, and other proprietary information at risk. Multinationals could land in legal trouble abroad -- particularly in Europe -- for violating stringent privacy laws there if they comply with U.S. government demands for financial records.

See Kent, plus quantum plus Lloyd plus Williams

plus legacy plus brad plus amorn