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The real determiner of whether one likes or dislikes the Patriot Act is the amount of trust that one places in the US government. I, for one, feel that any new government powers will eventually be abused, regardless of which party is in power. When these new powers circumvent the protections that are inherent in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution or side step regulations that have been put in place in response to past abuses, I really begin to sweat.
The Patriot Act has set up a parallel system of justice with much lower standards of probable cause...the FBI can perform unlimited "sneak and peek" searches, "trace and trap" all communications and peruse the medical/library/personal records of a "terror suspect" without ever producing a shred of evidence. Couple this with a broadening of the definition of what a "terrorist" is, and a picture of a highly abusable system begins to take shape.
Given all of the evidence that the various law enforcement had of the 9-11 attacks beforehand, we have to ask, are these powers even necessary? It's my belief that these provisions have been at the top of the supercop wish list for decades and that terrorism only provided the mechanism for ramming them through into law.
The Patriot Act, the legal black hole in Guantanamo and the Walker "torture" memos all illustrate that the current administration may like to talk about freedom but has no interest in actually spreading it. It's unfortunate that the American public is frightened enough to follow along.
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