Broken promise: Obama to reauthorize Patriot Act?

The Obama administration has announced its support of renewing three parts of the U.S. Patriot Act that expire at the end of the year. RT’s Priya Sridhar speaks to analyst Nicole Kardell about key issues in the act.

Introduced by George Bush following the 9/11 attacks, the act increased the powers of U.S. law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism. Controversy around this legislations continues because of its lowering the standards provided in constitutional protections.

“The three of the more troubling parts of the act, one of them talked about roving wiretaps, essentially lowering standards for what the government needs in order to conduct their different searches,“ Nicole Kardell says. “The first one concerning the roving wiretaps allows reviewing business records, library records, and medical records.”

“[President Obama] promised during his campaign that he was going to look at the Patriot Act in order to reinstitute protections for the abuse of civil liberties, but he’s not making any statements on that so far,” Kardell said.

The Patriot Act essentially is removing the requirement for investigations and searches without probable cause. And people seem pretty irritated with Obama’s decision to reauthorize some of the Patriot Act, as they believe it’s the invasion of their privacy.