AML / CFT: USA calls time on USA Patriot Act provisions
Enough is enough, The House of Representatives says. It refused to extend a raft of provisions on which the sun is due to set in the face of those who claim that more time is needed to put permanent measures in place. 10 years is long enough, they decided.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act (which slovenly people in many forms of life have taken to calling, simply, "the Patriot Act") three provisions relating to
- wire taps: approved by the Court but allowing expansion to multiple phones including mobiles
- s215 - the provision much hated by schools, universities and libraries: this is the section that was used, early in the life of the Act, to allow FBI and other agencies to waltz into libraries and demand access to - and in some cases removal of - computers which random users may have used to surf websites that the authorities deemed dubious
- specifically targetted surveillance of foreign individuals without cause unless they are known to be connected to a known terrorist organisation.
Republicans who wrote much of the USA PATRIOT Act (but not, by any means all of it: the bits most affecting the financial sector on, e.g. private banking, correspondent banking, etc. were derived from Senator Carl Levin's work) are furious. But Democrats, which how hold a majority in the House, say that the measures have not been proved to work, are oppressive and that if they were really needed, then they would have been passed into proper law not left as a temporary, renewable provision.
The sections remain in force until the end of this year but will then auto-expire, unless someone succeeds in reactivating them or bringing forward a Bill to replace them.
Previous attempts to do that have failed but now, without the safety net of a temporary provision, perhaps a further try will be more successful
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