I’m a Democrat for the reinforcement of the Patriot Act. It’s not strong enough.

We have been through four and five generations of technology since the PATRIOT Act.

Congress passed the deeply flawed Patriot Act and authorized the invasion of Iraq. It even gave its retroactive approval to warrantless wiretapping.

After careful deliberation, I voted today to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act removed major legal barriers that prevented the law enforcement, intelligence, and national defense communities from talking and coordinating their work to protect the American people and our national security.

Since its enactment in the weeks following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the tools in the Patriot Act have been used by law enforcement to stop more than 400 terrorist threats to our families and communities.

This is 2003, 2004. And then I started – after the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. And it was like, what is going on here?

I think it’s dawning on some Democrats that obstructing the Patriot Act, like they’ve been obstructing everything else, is bad for them politically.

I realize there are a lot of folks in my political party who disagree with me on this, but I think the Patriot Act is an important law enforcement tool, and it makes our country safer.

Sherrod Brown, in the House, was one of 66 members of the House to vote against the Patriot Act, and he continues to vote against the Patriot Act, to deny our law enforcement the tools they need to go against terror.

It’s disingenuous and wrong to say that the attorney general‘s expanded powers in the Patriot Act come with adequate oversight by the courts, … In reality, the most troubling provisions in the law make judges little more than rubber stamps in Justice Department investigations.

The Patriot Act makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment, which protects your right to a speedy and public trial, and your right to the assistance of counsel for your defense.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

I was a federal prosecutor when we exercised powers under the Patriot Act or under the FISA court.

We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

I would far rather over-estimate the threat [imposed by the Patriot Act] and be proven wrong than to underestimate the threat and wake up one morning in a world where the 21st century‘s J Edgar Hoover has the power to blackmail anyone in America.

I call it the ‘House of Reprehensibles.’ We don’t have any real political resistance to this growth of the domestic state across the board. So I’m much more focused on that than on the Patriot Act, which is a real effort, however inept, to deal with a real problem.

By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act.

The PATRIOT Act brought down the wall separating intelligence agencies from law enforcement and other entities charged with protecting the Nation from terrorism.

Today it is becoming harder to speak out, with the inception of the Patriot Act, the president has legislated free speech to be a crime.

The Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution after the Reichstag Fire Decree.

While the debate on the Patriot Act is far from over, it is important that all Americans continue in this dialogue and work together to ensure greater security for our nation.

Imagine a libertarian president challenging Congress to repeal the PATRIOT Act.

It’s the reason the United States fell into the Patriot Act – because they were reacting.

Civil libertarians have raised concerns that some of the Patriot Act’s provisions infringe on Constitutional rights. Those concerns are not supported by the facts.

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy.

The ‘Patriot Act,’ ‘Enhancing domestic security,’ and ‘Protect America’ all sound great – until you realize that they’re catch phrases for programs that contain roving wire taps without a warrant and the collection and sale of your personal information to the U.S. government.

I will also continue to strongly oppose any reauthorization of the Patriot Act that does not protect the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans with no connection to terrorism.

I think the Patriots actually live by the saying, ‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.’

We are in an era where censorship is creeping back in through the Patriot Act and where people are.. being intimidated not to speak about what we should be speaking about.

The weird thing for me is I’m sitting there in the ‘80s writing about the Mutant Control Act and here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with the Patriot Act, listening to presidential candidates talk about building walls to keep people out: who’s acceptable and who isn’t. It’s very creepy.

How will we defend ourselves if the Patriot Act expires? Well, perhaps we could just rely on the Constitution and demonstrate exactly how traditional judicial warrants can gather all the info we need – and how bulk collection really hasn’t worked.

The Patriot Act is ludicrous. Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total genocide, not subtle little hacks of the U.S. infrastructure, yet the government wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone‘s communications.

We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time.

I remember Congressman Conyers voting against the PATRIOT Act, voting against the Iraq War when it was unpopular to. That tremendous amount of courage that comes with that kind of leadership, I mean, that’s what we need.

Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.

You’d think after 8 years of things called ‘The Patriot Act’ and ‘No Child Left Behind‘ they would know that we have figured out the ‘Call it what it ain’t’ PR ploy by now, but… um… no.

The Patriot Act closed dangerous gaps in America’s law enforcement and intelligence capabilities, gaps that terrorists exploited when they attacked us.

We all deserve credit for this new surveillance state that we live in because we the people voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans alike….We voted for the people who voted for it, and then voted for the people who reauthorized it, then voted for the people who re-re-authorize d it.

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry.

The original PATRIOT Act greatly increased our nation’s ability to share intelligence information, made better use of technology, and provided terrorism investigators tools that have long been available in cases involving illegal drugs and organized crime.

When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.

Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.

The Patriot Act is certainly a concern; all of those things are dangerous. I think more important than me preaching is that we as a nation have to have the debate. I don’t know what the answers are. I just know that if the idea is to say talking about it makes you unpatriotic, I’ve got to call your bluff on that.

While lawyers are arguing about the PATRIOT Act or the America Freedom Act, the point is, the terrorists have moved on, the technologists have moved on, and we, the United States of America, are not taking advantage of the latest and greatest in technology the terrorists are. We need to get smart about it.

For too long, opponents of the PATRIOT Act have transformed this law into a grossly distorted caricature that bears no relation to the legislation itself.

I believe the Patriot Act strikes the right balance needed to protect our freedom and security.

I really think the Patriot Act violates our Constitution. It was, it is, an illegal act. The Congress, the Senate and the president cannot change the Constitution.

I listen a little to the Democrats, and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-September 11 attitude of defense.

Now that Bin Laden dead, can we get our civil liberties back?
That George Bush stole with the Patriot Act?

Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers – and not to tell you about it.

The Patriot Act allows and provides a basis for an exchange of information.

One of the first items of Congressional business in 2006 will be an effort to renew the USA Patriot Act.

I suppose the Green Party doesn’t care for the anti-civil libertarian provisions of the notoriously named Patriot Act, invading privacy, and being able to search your home, and not tell you for 72 hours.

The Patriot Act addresses various subjects. Some sections are beneficial and enhance our national security.

The Democrats were in the majority in the U.S. Senate when we voted for the Iraq war and passed the U.S. Patriot Act. It’s not enough to be in the majority, you have to stand for something.

Prior to the PATRIOT Act, the ability of government agencies to share information with each other was limited, which kept investigators from fully understanding what terrorists might be planning and to prevent their attacks.

Decisive action has been taken on the home front with passage of the USA Patriot Act, which has strengthened the hand of law enforcement agencies to stop terrorists before they can act.

The ‘Total Information Awareness‘ project is truly diabolical – mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial databases that were previously off limits.

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.

The Patriot Act was used against me in total contradiction to its stated purpose. Or perhaps it was the most logical use of the law, since it establishes a legal framework to crush free thinking and interrupt individual questioning of the government. It is the beginning of all dictatorship in America.

The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order.

The Patriot Act has increased the flow of information within our government, and it has helped break up terror cells in the United States of America and the United States Congress was right to renew the terrorist act. The Patriot Act.

If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government – as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance – people feel powerless.

The Patriot Act is the most egregious piece of legislation to ever leave Congress since the Alien and Sedition Acts, John Ashcroft and every member of Congress who voted for it should be indicted.