USA Patriot Act II would make news gathering a crime

Things are only going to get worse for the next 4 years I think it's time to fight back for our rights...

Goerge Orwell was only two decades off

sad but true

funny how people talk of fighting back but never ever do

kill cops, because one dead cop makes a difference.

Didn't some time traveller dude predict a civil war next year?

Better get me two of them air guns that shot the shit out of that TV and mount them on the sides of my GSX-R, and some football shoulder pads and a mohawk.

wow you really dont care about freedom or human rights do you? maybe you will when they start focing you to do shit...like killing jews in concentration camps

It pisses me off that people actually support laws like that... They figure: "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to worry about"

You mean things like stealing your land, making you live in a Reservation, and then celebrating it every year by commiting one of the seven deadly sins, then going shopping the next day??

You can read the entire 87-page draft here http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtawe...703_Doc_1.pdf. Constitutional watchdog Nat Hentoff has called it "the most radical government plan in our history to remove from Americans their liberties under the Bill of Rights." Some of DSEA's more draconian provisions:


Americans could have their citizenship revoked, if found to have contributed "material support" to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be "terrorist." As Hentoff wrote in the Feb. 28 Village Voice: "Until now, in our law, an American could only lose his or her citizenship by declaring a clear intent to abandon it. But -- and read this carefully from the new bill -- 'the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct.'" (Italics Hentoff's.)


Legal permanent residents (like, say, my French wife), could be deported instantaneously, without a criminal charge or even evidence, if the Attorney General considers them a threat to national security. If they commit minor, non-terrorist offenses, they can still be booted out, without so much as a day in court, because the law would exempt habeas corpus review in some cases. As the American Civil Liberties Union stated in its long brief against the DSEA, "Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus -- a protection guaranteed by the Constitution -- since the Civil War."


The government would be instructed to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at "detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities." Samples could be collected without a court order; one need only be suspected of wrongdoing by a law enforcement officer. Those refusing the cheek-swab could be fined $200,000 and jailed for a year. "Because no federal genetic privacy law regulates DNA databases, privacy advocates fear that the data they contain could be misused," Wired News reported March 31. "People with 'flawed' DNA have already suffered genetic discrimination at the hands of employers, insurance companies and the government."


Authorities could wiretap anybody for 15 days, and snoop on anyone's Internet usage (including chat and email), all without obtaining a warrant.


The government would be specifically instructed not to release any information about detainees held on suspicion of terrorist activities, until they are actually charged with a crime. Or, as Hentoff put it, "for the first time in U.S. history, secret arrests will be specifically permitted."


Businesses that rat on their customers to the Feds -- even if the information violates privacy agreements, or is, in fact, dead wrong -- would be granted immunity. "Such immunity," the ACLU contended, "could provide an incentive for neighbor to spy on neighbor and pose problems similar to those inherent in Attorney General Ashcroft's Operation TIPS."


Police officers carrying out illegal searches would also be granted legal immunity if they were just carrying out orders.


Federal "consent decrees" limiting local law enforcement agencies' abilities to spy on citizens in their jurisdiction would be rolled back. As Howard Simon, executive director of Florida's ACLU, noted in a March 19 column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune: "The restrictions on political surveillance were hard-fought victories for civil liberties during the 1970s."


American citizens could be subject to secret surveillance by their own government on behalf of foreign countries, including dictatorships.


The death penalty would be expanded to cover 15 new offenses.


And many of PATRIOT I's "sunset provisions" -- stipulating that the expanded new enforcement powers would be rescinded in 2005 -- would be erased from the books, cementing Ashcroft's rushed legislation in the law books. As UPI noted March 10, "These sunset provisions were a concession to critics of the bill in Congress."

oh man, so you must be what? 400 years old?

the US govt is going to kill you

the patriot act 2 says anyone with even the smallest terrorist ties (yes this includes anti war protesters
who have now officialy in the patriot act 2 been classed as terrorists) will be sentenced to death its one
of 15 new laws which get the death penalty, but heres the kicked....YOU DONT GET A TRIAL!

they just kill you, no trial no nothing!

from land of free choice to one big concentration camp

I would hate to see US flag in black and white.

Ant soon ve vill all be spikink in ze RUSHIAN akcent.

What utter claptrap.

But hey, great PR for Rickie Lee Jones!

ahahaha, and you idiots wonder why you're still living with mommy.

paying attention in school could have prevented this.

A brief look at history will show that your statement is incorrect. Revolutions triggered by popular uprising are frequent, and they often happen incredibly rapidly.

You know damn well this won't happen

Ok... prevent it ?