Patriot Act Challenge

In my American Government class this morning, we were conversing about how people are responsible for upholding there own freedoms and not relying on the government to do it for them. Somehow we unearthed the topic of the Patriot Act, when I replied "isn't that an infringement?" My teacher, said that people were too ignorant (uneducated) on the subject to think of it in those terms and challenged me to find as many people who can give me a brief overview of the Act. I am calling upon you, my fellow techies to prove that the masses are not ignorant, and that we do know the basics of the Act. I plead you to take up this challenge on my side and private message me with your one to two sentence explaination. (the purpose for the p/m is so noone can cheat and read anyone else's anwsers) I thank all who cooperate, and am in your debt.
~Kyle (phaktor5)

He is correct in one assumption, I have never ran into anyone else who has actually read it while they emotionally rip it up and call the government Nazi's. I think that was what he may have been getting at. So in your research you can say RoadClosed has read it over and over and all the proposed changes.

I don't actually know of anyone who has read it either, I was challenged to find people with a basic knowledge of it.

It's a 342 page document, so I rather doubt to many people have taken the time to read it.... not until they come out with a "Cliff's notes for the Patriot Act".

I'll wait for the movie ( <--- that is sarcasm, btw ;) )


http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.pdf

Why not ask the teacher to prove that everyone is ignorant? It's a pretty broad statement on both sides. Not everyone is ignorant but often creates opinions based on what they read/see. If CNN carries it, I suspect the "everyone" your teacher mentioned has heard about it and learned something about it.

The news is guilty of taking passages and quoting them out of context and also out right misreading them. For instance they say things like "they can NOW take your financial records at a bank or credit card with no due process and no search warrent approved by a court of law." They fail to mention that you never needed a court order so people are lead to believe some new law just came out when the fact is - it's not true. And the people reporting it are smart so they know they are misleading but they don't care. Just one example.

I think that patriot act could be good in some ways.