Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 28, 2010
Obama waited until Saturday night to renew the Bill of Rights busting Patriot Act. It was set to expire today. Both the Senate and the House signed off on the extension last week. So called “privacy protections” were dumped when Senate Democrats failed to raise a 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Cast aside were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records, the Associated Press reports.
“The Obama administration wanted to extend the measure because of provisions it says are important in tracking suspected terrorists, including roving wiretaps to track multiple communications devices,” Reuters reported on Thursday.
“Disappointingly, the government’s dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or ‘John Doe’ targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called ‘lone wolf’ provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse,” Kevin Bankston wrote last week after the act sailed through Congress.
Instead of tracking terrorists, the bill has been used to track the American people. In 2008, for instance, the Justice Department made 763 requests for “sneak-and-peek” warrants, but only three of those had to do with terrorism investigations, according to senator Russ Feingold.
Full story HERE
