The PATRIOT Act, which should aptly be named “The Act of Tyranny” was passed by Congress after September 11, 2001. At that time, the federal government made a massive power grab and suspended liberties and rights that are supposed to be protected under the Constitution. Now, Congressmen Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) are seeking to upend the tyrannical, pretended legislation.
“The PATRIOT Act contains many provisions that violate the Fourth Amendment and have led to a dramatic expansion of our domestic surveillance state,” said Congressman Massie. “It is long past time to repeal the PATRIOT Act and reassert the constitutional rights of all Americans. I am proud to co-sponsor Congressman Pocan’s bill and look forward to working with him on this issue.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
“The warrantless collection of millions of personal communications from innocent Americans is a direct violation of our constitutional right to privacy,” said Congressman Pocan. “Revelations about the NSA’s programs reveal the extraordinary extent to which the program has invaded Americans’ privacy. This legislation ends the NSA’s dragnet surveillance practices, while putting provisions in place to protect the privacy of American citizens through real and lasting change.”
The bill, dubbed the Surveillance State Repeal Act (HR 1466), was introduced last Tuesday. It seeks to shutdown government’s ability to backdoor its way into current and future technology “legally,” by way of forcing technology companies to install such methods in their products.
Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt said, “The simplest outcome [of NSA spying] is that we end up breaking the internet.”
“What’s going to happen is that governments will bring in bad laws and say ‘we want our own internet and we don’t want to work with others,'” he added. “The cost of that is huge to knowledge and science, and has huge implications.”
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) seems to agree with Schmidt’s assessment.
“It is time to end the digital dragnet, which harms American liberty and the American economy without making the country safer. The US government should stop requiring American companies to participate in the suspicionless collection of their customers’ data, and begin the process of rebuilding trust both at home and abroad,” said Senator Wyden.
“The United States – here in Silicon Valley, up in the Silicon Forest of the State of Oregon that I am so proud to represent, and in tech campuses and garage start-ups across the country – has the best technologies and the best ideas to drive high-tech innovation. It is policy malpractice to squander that capital for no clear security gain.”
The bill also seeks to ensure extended protections for whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden.
The legislation not only seeks to overturn the PATRIOT Act, but the FISA Amendments Act, which has been the source to which the National Security Agency has pointed to justify its unconstitutional, warrantless spying on American citizens.
“Our Founding Fathers fought and died to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act authorize,” said Massie.
“I reject the notion that we must sacrifice liberty for security- we can live in a secure nation which also upholds a strong commitment to civil liberties,” said Congressman Pocan.
I reject that notion too Congressman Pocan. I am just as wary of terrorism as the next person. However, that does not give the federal government, who is to be subservient to the people of the united States the authority to violate their masters’ rights. After all, they are our creature, not the other way around.
America, it’s time for you to stand up and get on the backs of your representatives today. Tell them you want an end to the violation of your rights that are supposed to be protected under the Constitution. Tell them to stop interfering in your life for the federal government’s power grab. To borrow from a bygone quote, “If we all hang together, we won’t all hang separately.)
Click here to locate your representative and tell them to support HR 1466.
