Forget the White House’s doomsday talk about American intelligence going blind. Thanks to backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes, U.S. spies will keep on snooping.
President Obama and his top national security officials have spent the past few days warning that if intelligence-gathering authorities in the Patriot Act expire just after midnight Sunday—which is now a foregone conclusion—the United States will face a greater risk of a terrorist attack.
That argument is highly debatable—at least, in the short term. Not only does the U.S. government have all sorts of other ways to collect the same kind of intelligence outlined in the Patriot Act, but there’s also a little-noticed back door in the act that would allow U.S. spy agencies gather information in pretty much the same ways they did before.
In other words, there’s a zombie Patriot Act—one that will live on, even if the current version dies.
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Should the Patriot Act sunset today?