I've tried to get upset about the Patriot act, but the fact is great "chill" or "oppression" hasn't happened.
There is the argument that the USA Patriot Act is a combination of the Alien and Sedition Acts and Kristallnacht but it's not.
It's no more invasive than the RICO Act is.
Many of the new powers under the act — such as "the roving wiretap," which allows the government to continue monitoring a target who switches phones — aren't really new. They give counterterrorism investigators the same powers investigators already have in mob cases. Federal authorities cannot do any of the nasty things under the Patriot Act that critics complain about like electronic surveillance, record searches, etc, without a court order and a showing of probable cause. A federal judge has to sign off on any alleged "violation of civil liberties."
The "secret courts" and "secret judges" have been upheld by the Supreme Court during the 80s, so it's not like it's unconstitutional or anything.
A target of critics is Section 215. It allows investigators to seize documents, including, theoretically, library records, from a third party if they bear on a terrorism investigation. The ACLU says that this means the FBI has the power to "spy on a person because they don't like the book she reads." But this is another power that already existed. Grand juries have always been able to subpoena records if they are relevant to a criminal investigation. The Patriot Act extends this power to counterterrorism investigators and requires a court order for it to be used.
I tried to get upset about it, I really did, but after looking around, I couldn't get all bent out of shape about it. It's really much less of a deal than the sorts of things that happened during the War of 1812, Civil War, and much, much less than what happened during the World Wars.
