- Joined
- Sep 22, 2003
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- 13,182
Found this stuff:
Capitol Hill sources have told GOA there is a provision in this bill (amending Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act) which would allow the FBI to get a secret court order to seize ANY business records it believes would be relevant to an anti-terrorism investigation... without having to make the case that the gun records they're confiscating have any connection to a suspected terrorist.
Hence, in the name of fighting terrorism, the FBI will be given a license for unbridled fishing expeditions.
Gun sales are business transactions, and FFL holders must retain copies of the 4473 forms (yellow sheets) filled out on every gun sale. Thus, an anti-gun administration could easily determine that such records would be useful in the fight against terrorism, and demand them all.
But that's not all. More than just your gun purchase records are at stake. Financial and medical records, library records and much more will now be open to FBI fishing expeditions. They won't have to get any prior court approval.
It gets worse. If the gun dealer, where you purchased firearms, is required to hand over your gun purchase records, he is BARRED from telling you about it under the PATRIOT Act.
http://www.gunowners.org/a111705.htm
But there's hope!
In Congress, where numbers are everything, the math on the Patriot Act suddenly seems to be moving in favor of Sen. Russell Feingold.
He was a minority of one four years ago, when the Wisconsin Democrat cast the lone Senate vote against the USA Patriot Act in the traumatic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The law, he said then, gave government too much power to investigate its citizens. Ninety-nine senators disagreed.
Now add more than two dozen senators to Feingold's side, including the leaders of his party and some of the chamber's most conservative Republicans, and the balance of power shifts.....
Moments later, the senior Democrat on the issue, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., told reporters that more than 40 votes exist to sustain a filibuster in a test vote Friday. White House allies said they would rather see the law's 16 temporary provisions expire entirely than give opponents another three months or more to keep whittling away at them.
Feingold finds himself with some unlikely allies, including the Christian Defense Coalition. Notably, the National Rifle Association has not endorsed the Patriot Act renewal that was personally negotiated by Vice President Dick Cheney. The NRA's non-position allows its Senate supporters to oppose renewing the law in its entirety.
"Folks, when we're dealing with civil liberties, you don't compromise them," said Sen. Larry Craig (news, bio, voting record), R-Idaho, an NRA board member....
The opposition that began with Feingold's one vote has bloomed into a bloc of Democrats and Republicans concerned about a range of powers the original act gave the FBI, and how they are used. This group prefers the curbs on government power passed by the Senate but rejected in a compromise with the House. Now, faced with an up-or-down vote on the accord, they say no.
Chief among their concerns are the National Security Letters that the FBI can use to compel the release of such private records as financial, computer and library transactions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051215...fb3AMmMwfIE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
Capitol Hill sources have told GOA there is a provision in this bill (amending Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act) which would allow the FBI to get a secret court order to seize ANY business records it believes would be relevant to an anti-terrorism investigation... without having to make the case that the gun records they're confiscating have any connection to a suspected terrorist.
Hence, in the name of fighting terrorism, the FBI will be given a license for unbridled fishing expeditions.
Gun sales are business transactions, and FFL holders must retain copies of the 4473 forms (yellow sheets) filled out on every gun sale. Thus, an anti-gun administration could easily determine that such records would be useful in the fight against terrorism, and demand them all.
But that's not all. More than just your gun purchase records are at stake. Financial and medical records, library records and much more will now be open to FBI fishing expeditions. They won't have to get any prior court approval.
It gets worse. If the gun dealer, where you purchased firearms, is required to hand over your gun purchase records, he is BARRED from telling you about it under the PATRIOT Act.
http://www.gunowners.org/a111705.htm
But there's hope!
In Congress, where numbers are everything, the math on the Patriot Act suddenly seems to be moving in favor of Sen. Russell Feingold.
He was a minority of one four years ago, when the Wisconsin Democrat cast the lone Senate vote against the USA Patriot Act in the traumatic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The law, he said then, gave government too much power to investigate its citizens. Ninety-nine senators disagreed.
Now add more than two dozen senators to Feingold's side, including the leaders of his party and some of the chamber's most conservative Republicans, and the balance of power shifts.....
Moments later, the senior Democrat on the issue, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., told reporters that more than 40 votes exist to sustain a filibuster in a test vote Friday. White House allies said they would rather see the law's 16 temporary provisions expire entirely than give opponents another three months or more to keep whittling away at them.
Feingold finds himself with some unlikely allies, including the Christian Defense Coalition. Notably, the National Rifle Association has not endorsed the Patriot Act renewal that was personally negotiated by Vice President Dick Cheney. The NRA's non-position allows its Senate supporters to oppose renewing the law in its entirety.
"Folks, when we're dealing with civil liberties, you don't compromise them," said Sen. Larry Craig (news, bio, voting record), R-Idaho, an NRA board member....
The opposition that began with Feingold's one vote has bloomed into a bloc of Democrats and Republicans concerned about a range of powers the original act gave the FBI, and how they are used. This group prefers the curbs on government power passed by the Senate but rejected in a compromise with the House. Now, faced with an up-or-down vote on the accord, they say no.
Chief among their concerns are the National Security Letters that the FBI can use to compel the release of such private records as financial, computer and library transactions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051215...fb3AMmMwfIE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
