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The USA PATRIOT Act is hundreds and hundreds of pages long. It documents a huge number of crimes, many but not all of which are directly related to terrorism. If the Rubix Cube patent has in fact expired, the Feds made a goof. However, I don't see anything wrong with those agencies monitoring patent law violations because Congress is the only body authorized to give patents.
I don't like the USA PATRIOT Act because of my fairly strict interpretation of the 4th amendment. However, this particular case, let alone the ones about tracking down non-terrorist criminals, are examples of the Act working well. What's wrong with using the new powers to track down smugglers and bookies?
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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