July 12, 2005

Did You Know About the Patriot Act SHUN-Rally?

It happened in NYC today.

Boy, I need to start carrying around a camera. As I walked by the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue during my lunchtime, I saw a gathering of maybe 100 people or so. (Most of them seemed to be curious onlookers.) Some guy was trying to sing, but was really warbling into a microphone, while there were possibly a dozen (maybe a few more) people with placards with worthy quotes such as "If you ignore your rights they'll go away" and "Schumer support the SAFE Act."

I wish I hadn't been in a hurry to get back to work (having a job kind of puts a cramp on one's time for such things as protests), because I would have loved to see more. What the heck was it all about, you ask?

According to the website, the New York City Bill of Rights Defense Campaign is worried that the Patriot Act is infringing upon your, yes, YOUR civil liberties!

The New York City Bill of Rights Defense Campaign and the New York Civil Liberties Union today urged members of New York's Congressional delegation to restore basic rights and freedoms by supporting legislation that reforms provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that undermine civil rights and civil liberties. The NYCBORDC and NYCLU also called on lawmakers to oppose legislationthat would reinstate sections of the Patriot Act that are scheduled to sunset.

Have I been infringed upon? I'm glad the NYCBRDC is here to let me know I'm being oppressed, otherwise I might not have noticed.

What are they complaining about?

...a provision that allows the FBI to seize sensitive personal information from individuals when there's no proof of criminal activity (Section 212); a provision that allows criminal investigators to use secret wiretaps when there's no suspicion of criminal activity (Section 218); and a provision that allows the use of "John Doe" roving wiretaps to monitor the telephone conversations of innocent persons (Section 206).

Let's look past the leftist rhetoric for Section 212, for example: it allows a service provider, such as an ISP, to voluntarily provide the content and records of communications related to a subscriber if it involves an emergency related to death or serious injury. Death threats against government officials, protection of children in exploitation cases, and finding kidnaping victims all fall under this category.

But don't take my word for it...or theirs. Please. Read it yourself--and judge for yourself.

I find it interesting that these are the same people who think the government should be able to tax you until you have money coming out of your pores for programs that don't benefit everyone (indeed, many of them don't benefit anyone), yet they complain when, for national security reasons, the government might want to see if someone looking up how to make a bomb on his library's Internet.

Then again, these are the people who don't want us to win the war against the Islamofasicsts...or as Mark Levin calls them, the IslamoNazis. So I guess their complaints make sense when viewed that way.

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