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The Patriot Act Is Not Fit for Purpose. Nor Is Its Replacement.
Perhaps nowhere on earth is the will to ignore facts stronger than in America’s Capitol. The ongoing debate over whether to reauthorize three expired provisions of the 2001 Patriot Act is a perfect case in point. And the proposed reforms in the USA Freedom Act hardly fare better.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and presidential hopeful Senator Marco Rubio have repeated more times than I can count that these Patriot Act provisions are “vital” to preventing another 9/11.
But they are objectively wrong. Last month the Department of Justice Inspector General (DoJ IG) released a partially declassified version of a long overdue Patriot Act compliance report.
Nearly 14 years of using this provision—which has swept up tens of millions of records of innocent Americans in the process—has resulted in zero terrorist plots against America being uncovered, much less disrupted.
And this applies not simply to the telephone metadata program exposed by Edward Snowden two years ago, but to every Sec. 215-related program since the Patriot Act was enacted in October 2001. The DoJ IG report’s findings mirror those of President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which issued its own report over 18 months ago.
Full Story at Newsweek.com
Perhaps nowhere on earth is the will to ignore facts stronger than in America’s Capitol. The ongoing debate over whether to reauthorize three expired provisions of the 2001 Patriot Act is a perfect case in point. And the proposed reforms in the USA Freedom Act hardly fare better.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and presidential hopeful Senator Marco Rubio have repeated more times than I can count that these Patriot Act provisions are “vital” to preventing another 9/11.
But they are objectively wrong. Last month the Department of Justice Inspector General (DoJ IG) released a partially declassified version of a long overdue Patriot Act compliance report.
Nearly 14 years of using this provision—which has swept up tens of millions of records of innocent Americans in the process—has resulted in zero terrorist plots against America being uncovered, much less disrupted.
And this applies not simply to the telephone metadata program exposed by Edward Snowden two years ago, but to every Sec. 215-related program since the Patriot Act was enacted in October 2001. The DoJ IG report’s findings mirror those of President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which issued its own report over 18 months ago.
Full Story at Newsweek.com
