Opinion of the PATRIOT Act

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm generally fine with it. It's less important than almost everyone assumes, though. Hilarious that that's how they caught Hastert.

That they used it to catch Hastert points to the danger of it.  Something cutting corners with due process, argued for as special measures necessary for the particularly danger of terrorism, is extended to all areas of criminal law.  We've seen this play out before with RICO. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm generally fine with it. It's less important than almost everyone assumes, though. Hilarious that that's how they caught Hastert.

That they used it to catch Hastert points to the danger of it.  Something cutting corners with due process, argued for as special measures necessary for the particularly danger of terrorism, is extended to all areas of criminal law.  We've seen this play out before with RICO. 

That's kind of silly because they didn't use a FISA wiretap to catch him or anything.  He just broke the stricter rules put in place for all financial crimes.  Right?

It is the same principle whereby something promoted as a weapon against terrorism gets turned around and used against people who are posing no sort of existential threat to anyone.  The stricter rules were sold as a tool for intercepting terror funding and drug trafficking.  Structuring a large cash payment is not an inherently destructive act and shouldn't generally be a reason to put someone behind bars.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Massive Freedom Act.  Civil libertarians need to grow up and realize that it's their job to protect their privacy, not the government's.  And the Fourth Amendment can't apply unless there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.

If those civil libertarians really believed in privacy they wouldn't make phone calls and send emails, right?