Threaten our liberties? (Score 1)

Are they threatening our liberties? Of course not From lifeandliberty.gov, the gov's propoganda site for this stuff: "The Patriot Act limits domestic terrorism to conduct that breaks criminal laws, and endangers human life" WOW! You have to break a law to be prosecuted from that law! Later on in that site, they explain that the government is only interested in the library habits of terrorists, not library habits of regular people, so regular people don't worry. To assuage fears about library privacy being violated, they go on to say:

This federal court, however, can issue these orders only after the government demonstrates the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a U.S. person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment.

Even THAT isn't true under the new law. The FBI can just write themselves a letter giving themselves permission to get private information from libraries while preventing the libraries from informing their users. That's unbelievable!