Constant Opinions

Somehow, I was just not surprised at all to hear that the FBI has admitted to abusing its powers under the Patriot Act. You can read all kinds of stories about this. I find the slants on each site interesting. Fox News, for example, just lightly mentions it, then goes on to discuss President Bush’s visit to South America. That’s fine, but not exactly relevant to what the FBI did. After a search I did find a better story, but the first one I mentioned was the only one in the Politics Headlines section.

The Washington Post was more detailed, especially about these actions being an abuse of the Patriot Act and something that many people have feared. The Boston Herald took a similar view, but with a much shorter article. The Chicago Tribune did a longer report than the Boston Herald, with fairly good detail.

But no matter the news slant, the reports are disturbing. I understand the need to have ways to investigate potential terrorists without alerting them, but the frequency of abuse of this power is quite disturbing.

What particularly disturbs me is that the Patriot Act was made to make it easier for the FBI to do this job, and they have people there too lazy to take all the steps to do their jobs in a legal manner. This kind of abuse cannot be tolerated.

Now, you can make the arguement that if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear, but I don’t hold to that kind of belief, especially in this kind of circumstance. Who exactly is defining what “something wrong” is? Is writing this post criticizing the FBI “something wrong” enough to warrant such an investigation.

Yes, that is an extreme example and I do not think things are that far gone yet. I certainly hope they aren’t, at least.

I would like to see this investigated, and the people responsible appropriately prosecuted. They broke the law in their zeal. Protect us from terrorists, but keep it within the law, especially when some rather borderline provisions have been made to make it possible.

Technorati Tags: FBI, Mueller, Patriot Act, broken laws, corruption, current events

Filed under: Controversial, Politics