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Originally Posted by politicophile
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.
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homeland security and patent enforcement have absolutely nothing in common or are even remotely related.
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Originally Posted by politicophile
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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and this goes back to the first days of the act. People were very wary what this would be used for and we were specifically told that it would only be used to fight terrorism. On top of that, we had our arguments countered by people
that said the exact same thing, that it would only be used for terrorism. Now, though, once regular crimes could be prosecuted using this act for battling terrorism, the argument switched to the 'why shouldn't we?' mode. This was a classic bait and switch and I can only wonder, whats next?
edit-removed two words to lessen the personal tone