Well, any movement against the Legalize Citizen Spying Act is good, but the victory seems rather hollow to me. Bush claims he'll veto the bill for one; but more importantly the reduction in powers comes down to this: feds can't spy on what books you check out at libraries or buy at bookstores. That's about it.
"Last year the House defeated a similar proposal offered by Sanders. This year's version deleted references to material read on the Internet and would also maintain federal agents' ability to more easily scrutinize business records that could point to suspicious activities."
Now, they can spy on your internet use. Any bets on whether or not they'll be tracking your Amazon purchases? I don't know, but the biggest problem with Patriot is the same thing that led to Enron, Worldcom, and the Wall Street meltdown.
Wall Street melted down because of a tortured "Chinese Wall" theory about analysts versus investment bankers. Analysts at brokers are supposed to do independent research and provide customers with honest, accurate data about the health of a company; most customers only care about the buy rating (I'd mention sell, but brokers never utter the word "sell" anymore.)
The investment bankers of the same brokerage firm spend all day financing deals, m & as, and IPOs. They are not objective, their entire motivation is getting the stock price higher by any means possible (more money for daddy.)
The Chinese Wall has never worked well, and during the mass consolidation (sometimes illegal) of financial services in the late 90s, the Wall crumbled completely. Analysts were getting in on the IPO action. Companies demanded bankers force their analysts to cover their stocks and only with buy/strong buy ratings. Everybody in the loop got filthy rich, and the average Joe, pension plans, and retirees all got screwed when the entire, corrupt cesspool exploded.
The Patriot Act works on the same principle. "Don't worry folks, while we seek to violate every protection you've earned as a citizen of the United States, we will only enable them duing a terrorism investigation."
Now, how exactly are they going to protect the average Joe from illegal searches or domestic spying? A Chinese Wall. If they accidentally spy on you and you're not a terrorist, they promise they won't let any of that info jump over the wall.
If you think there's even the slightest chance that information isn't going to (a) end up in some huge database, and (b) made readily available to whatever fed wants it; I envy your naivety.
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