According to this news.com article by Declan McCullagh the senate has voted (in secret) to expand the Patriot act to expand the FBI’s powers to reduce judicial oversight and more disturbingly allow them to classify some subpoenas as secret with up to 5 years in prison for disclosing them.

I have never been one of the rabid anti-Patriot act zelots. I thought that the original act went too far in some instances, but overall was balanced and since it had a sunset clause we were protected from it becoming permanent. But this continuing trend towards operating out of the public view is very disturbing to me. When the people lose the right to monitor the activities of their government the government has no incentive to act in the best interests of the people.

Terrorism is a threat, and needs to be fought on every front, but it is becoming the latest boogeyman. Invoke ‘terrorist’ and ‘national security’ and you end up with 57-year old Principals being added to the terrorist watch-list for a simple mistake.