Quote Originally Posted by lemonboy
Not quite. It was temporarily renewed and will be up again for the full renewal.
I don't think the Patriot Act has anything to do with it. It does allow for more secret shit directed at american citizens without court orders but the DEA, FBI, etc have had extremely broad search and seizure powers, some signed by reagan, some signed by clinton, and everyone in between, for a long time now. The RICO act is the one that allows them to take all of your assetts, computer data, etc etc. However it is usually reserved for folks who are actually making a profit on drugs. There have been several attempts in congress to extend these laws to users and I think the supreme court recently ruled on some of the search and seizure methods, mostly in favor of the cops such as using infra red heat detection to find growrooms. (i think it still requires reasonable suspiscion and a warrant) The supremes also ruled recently on the issue of searching cars. It's pretty much at the cops discretion and he/she does not have to be looking for anything specific anymore. It used to be that unless they were looking for something specific, they couldn't use it in court if they found something illegal. You still have the right to refuse but then they just impound the car, get a warrant and search it anyway.