good & bad news re:the "Patriot" Act

Congress May Curb Some Patriot Act Powers
WASHINGTON - Congress is moving to curb some of the police powers it gave the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including imposing new restrictions on the FBI's access to private phone and financial records.

A budding House-Senate deal on the expiring USA Patriot Act includes new limits on federal law enforcement powers and rejects the Bush administration's request to grant the FBI authority to get administrative subpoenas for wiretaps and other covert devices without a judge's approval.

Even with the changes, however, every part of the law set to expire Dec. 31 would be reauthorized and most of those provisions would become permanent.

Under the agreement, for the first time since the act became law, judges would get the authority to reject national security letters giving the government secret access to people's phone and e-mail records, financial data and favorite Internet sites.

Holders of such information — such as banks and Internet providers — could challenge the letters in court for the first time, said congressional aides involved in merging separate, earlier-passed House and Senate bills reauthorizing the expiring Patriot Act.
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Polls show that most Americans do not distinguish between the Patriot Act and the war on terror, and a majority knows little about the four-year-old law. But the more Americans know about the Patriot Act, the less they like.

A poll conducted in August by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut showed that almost two-thirds of all Americans, 64 percent, said they support the Patriot Act. But only 43 percent support the law's requirement that banks turn over records to the government without judicial approval; 23 percent support secret searches of Americans' homes without informing the occupants for a period of time.

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Notice that people support the Patriot Act only as long as they don't know what it really is! I guess ignorance really is bliss, especially if you're a republican! Of course, the repugs in power desparately try to keep as much information as possible from the American people because they know the more that the people know, the less the people will like the repugs!
The more information that gets out there, the better off the country will be!