Senate panel votes to expand Patriot Act

Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 08 June 2005
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Instead, the controversial post-9/11 law would be expanded to give the FBI new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, according to a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee.

But the proposal appears to grant the FBI more power to seek information from banks, hospitals, libraries, and so on through "administrative subpoenas" without prior judicial oversight. The subpoenas are only supposed to be used for terrorism or clandestine intelligence cases.

One other detail: the FBI may designate that the subpoenas are secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison (and five years if the disclosure is deemed to "obstruct an investigation.")

In testimony in April, FBI director Robert Mueller said: "The administrative subpoena power would be a valuable complement to (existing) tools and provide added efficiency to the FBI's ability to investigate and disrupt terrorism operations and our intelligence gathering efforts."

Everyone seems to be a terrorist now; or at least somehow related to terrorism. This makes a good excuse for removing privacy. While paranoia is quite common amongst security people, it shouldn't be allowed to get out of control. There have been "police institutions" with similar powers before in the old GDR and Russia; not to forget the 3rd Reich. It never proved to be worth it.