Yesterday President Obama signed the one-year extension of the three provisions of the PATRIOT Act that were set to expire today. This comes after the 315-79 vote by the House of Representatives approving the bill last week. Restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize records were negotiated when PATRIOT Act reauthorization was being considered in committee last year,  but Congress passed this extension without any of those changes to the legislation. Some members of Congress argued that revisions made to protect privacy and civil liberties would only take away from the ability of the intelligence agencies to find suspected terrorists.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), expressed opposition to the extension, stating, “While I strongly support using the most robust tools possible to go after terrorists, Congress must revise and narrow—not extend—Bush era policies.”

The PATRIOT Act, which was rushed through Congress amid fear in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, has never included necessary safeguards for privacy and civil liberties. It dramatically expanded government authority to monitor its citizens and has lead to intrusions on our right to privacy. It is unacceptable that Congress and the President have allowed these violations to continue for nearly nine years.  Earl Ofari, in an article from late last year after the Obama administration first signaled a desire to extend the three provisions of the PATRIOT Act, writes;

Then-Senatorial candidate Obama in 2003 branded the Patriot Act “shoddy and dangerous” and pledged to dump it….Obama justifies keeping nearly all of Bush’s terror war provisions in place with the standard rationale that the government must have all the weapons needed to deal with the threat of terrorism, even legally and constitutionally dubious weapons.

Obama promised us transparency in the White House and told us that as Americans we must reject the false choice between security and liberty; he spoke out against the PATRIOT Act and its unconstitutional surveillance provisions, but now he has officially supported the continuation of those violations.

Tags: Barack Obama, PATRIOT Act, surveillance, wiretapping

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 9:03 am and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.