Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Judge Rules Against Parts of the Patriot Act

The government’s second attempt to rewrite the U.S. Constitution has failed. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has ruled against the rewritten USA Patriot Act, saying that it "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers." The main area of concern is that the FBI is allowed to demand private customer records from businesses, without a court order, which is required for searches done by the United States government. This completely bypasses the judiciary branch of the government and is absolutely unconstitutional.
In an investigative situation, the government can order NSLs or national security letters which is an investigative tool that is used by the FBI to get businesses to turn over private customer information. The most controversial and sought after private customer information would be that of Internet service providers, telephone companies, and public libraries. Not only will the businesses have to turnover the private information but they would have “the right to remain silent” about informing their customers that it was turning over records to the government. The FBI is arguing that phone or Internet records are "relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." That might be so but that is not a good enough reason to change the very values that this country was founded upon. Has anybody in the Executive Branch of the government even read the Constitution? Apparently they have not.
For more information, check out the original article by clicking this hyper link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20624404/wid/11915829

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