Government Congress Is Trying To Expand The Patriot Act (rare.us)

The house is scheduled to vote in an hour or so on expanding provisions of the patriot act, allowing massive financial information sharing to include dozens of new offenses ("specified unlawful activities"), including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 

 

 The house bill is H.R. 5606. My quick read is that this essentially lets FEDGOV expand massive semi-secret databases of financial transactions without a warrant while protecting banks from liability for helping them. 

In 5 years from 2002-2007, for example, with a smaller ability this led to 35,000 suspects but there were only 21 search warrants.

 Call your representative. Rare.us reports:

"The proposed bill, H.R. 5606, expands Section 314 of the Patriot Act to cover non-terrorism or money laundering related investigations.

Critics claim that the bill is a threat to the privacy of innocent Americans and is being rammed through Congress without debate.

Section 314 encourages law enforcement to share information with financial institutions on money laundering and terrorism.

It also encourages financial institutions to share information with each other."

The report says the House Liberty Caucus, led by Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), opposes the bill, claiming that Treasury Department regulations will compromise the privacy of Americans as it will all but mandate financial institutions to share information with the government.

 The caucus also opposes the bill because it is being brought to the floor under a suspension of the rules, and is not being considered under "regular order."

The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) described HR 5606 as an attempt "to stop the flow of illicit dollars to criminals and terror organizations."