Marching Towards a Police State (part 3)

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Senate panel votes to expand Patriot Act

This week the Senate was to take up the repeal of the Patrion Act, or at least consider scaling it back.

Instead, the controversial post-9/11 law would be expanded to give the FBI new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, according to a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee.

The latest proposal grants the FBI more power to seek information from banks, hospitals, libraries, and other organizations through "administrative subpoenas" without prior judicial oversight.
In addition, the FBI may designate that the subpoenas are secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison.

The ACLU denounced the Senate Intelligence committee's vote. "In a move antithetical to our Constitution, the new 'administrative subpoena' authority would let the FBI write and approve its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without prior judicial approval," the group said in a statement. "Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order."

Isn't the Republican party all about individual freedom and less government involvement in people's daily lives?

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