The Patriot Act Bites Back.

In the wake of the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, Congress rushed to pass the so-called "PATRIOT Act," authored by Rep. Sensenbrenner as H.R. 3162, it was introduced on October 23, 2001, passed the House on October 24, 2001, with overwhelming support, passed the Senate on October 25, 2001, with only a single dissent, and was signed into law by President Bush on October 26, 2001, with an immediate effective date.

You haven't read it yet?  Don't feel too badly.  I'm pretty sure almost none of the Representatives or Senators read it, either.  How could they have?  Here is a link to its text:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf

Now, I'm a lawyer.  Reading and deciphering this type of thing is my thing, but this document is 132 pages of insertions, deletions, cross-references, changes.  Let's be realistic about this.  Not only did your Congressman/Congresswoman not read it in the 24 hours between when it was introduced and when the vote was taken, your Senator didn't read it either. 

So why did almost everyone vote for it?  It was political suicide to vote against this bill no matter what it said.  Congress could have written that we had to make copies of our house keys and turn them in to the local police station.  "Trust us.  If you aren't a criminal, you will have nothing to worry about."  So goes the refrain today, so went the refrain 12 years ago.  We won't investigate you unless we find a link between you and a criminal, but if we find a link, we need to act quickly.  Like lemmings, large groups of people will start following one another notwithstanding what (with hindsight) is an obvious danger ahead.  Logic, reasoning, and plain common sense fall away to our basic survival instinct.  Under attack, we struck back offensively within 30 days with Operating Enduring Freedom (at a cost of over $150b and over 2,000 US casualties).  The USA PATRIOT Act was our defensive countermeasure.

Twelve years later, after renewals, extensions, and reauthorizations, the resolve borne of panic and mass delusion (maybe Saddam didn't really have those weapons after all) has given way to the reality that this is, after all, America -- the "Land of the Free."  Maybe we really don't want to give one branch of government -- our Executive Branch -- unbridled authority to intrude into our personal lives (as boring and innocuous as they, undoubtedly, are) looking for a reason to arrest us, harass us, cajole us, or turn on or turn in our neighbors.  Our Founding Fathers knew this was a recipe for trouble.  Those of us old enough to live through the McCarthy years know why first hand.  Those of us who lived through the Civil Rights era and Watergate learned to distrust an unchecked Executive Branch.  We learned the mantra "Power Corrupts.  Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely."

The Patriot Act was bad law when it was enacted.  It is bad law now.  Just because you don't have anything in the trunk of your car does NOT mean you should agree to open it up to when the police officer asks you if it is ok to look in your trunk.  Just because you are a law abiding citizen does NOT mean you should let the FBI or the NSA or the local police through your front door when they ask if they can come in without a warrant.  And just because you aren't doing anything "wrong" does NOT mean you should agree, explicitly or tacitly, to allow the Executive Branch and their spy agencies to go through your phone records, listen to your calls, go through your Internet search results, study your web browsing habits, and look at your stored files on Apple, DropBox, Google, or wherever.

What we've learned in the past few days is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on.  As voters, we elected the Representatives and Senators who invited them into our electronic lives.  The time has come to politely invite them out.  If our representatives won't do it, we should invite our representatives out.

And, just maybe, we will be a little bit more careful next time.  Because there always is a next time.  Freedom is worth a "next time."  It is that risk that we all make -- a sacrifice that we all make -- for maintaining our collective freedom.  If we don't, we haven't won anything at all.