- Oct 30, 2000
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Originally posted by: Rainsford
You could be right, but the real question to be asking isn't whether or not the Patriot Act has had a negative impact on your life, the question is whether or not it has had a positive impact in the war on terror. There is very little data to support this idea, and I tend to think the answer is that it hasn't helped very much. Everything I've seen suggests that our law enforcement agencies don't suffer from not being able to gather enough data, their problem is that they don't know where to direct their search, or they can't put all the pieces together even after they have them.
I could be wrong about this, but assuming that every expansion of police powers helps them do their job isn't a good way to think about it.
1) We are not privy to all information regarding the Act (ie. when /why is has been used)
2) Difficult to prove a negative (ie> The Scott Ritter-IRan situation) If something does not happen, is it because it never would have, or a change of plans was iomplimented to prevent the original event.
3) Given some of the implimentations, certain situations that have occured in the past, may have been able to be prevented under the current implimentation. OThers were people responding to what ifs.