Although our government claims that the PATRIOT Act is necessary to fight terrorism it’s more apparent every day that terrorism is the secondary consideration of this legislation:
So how has the Patriot Act fared as a defense against terrorism? The act has been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases.
So the PATRIOT Act has been used ~107 times more often to fight the war on drugs than the war on terror (I wonder if they can use it to fight the war on illiteracy or the war on poverty). This demonstrates that the PATRIOT Act isn’t seen as a last ditch piece of legislation to be used sparingly against only the most dangerous enemies of America. It’s obvious that this legislation was meant to be an all encompassing tool used to fight any and all crime.
In the eyes of the government civil rights too often get in the way of their agents enforcing laws against behaviors decreed illegal because some politician needed to manufacture something for the American people to fear in order to justify yet another expansion of government power.