Why is Patriot Act under fire if homegrown terror threat is rising?

From its inception, the Patriot Act has drawn criticism for its its potential effect on civil liberties and privacy rights. Civil liberty advocates say the law provides the government too much power to spy on Americans without their knowledge, infringing particularly on the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

The vote against the extensions surprised the new GOP leadership Tuesday night, especially since extensions in the past have been basically pro forma. Twenty-six Republicans, many of them with tea party affiliations, voted against the law. They joined 122 Democrats who voted against it, many of whom had voted previously to extend the Patriot Act.

Tea party debate about government overreach may have played into the renewed debate over the act, says Robert Martin, Hamilton College political theorist who is working on a book called "Government by Dissent."

"If there is rethinking of some of the more strenuous provisions of the Patriot Act, it well may be part of a tendency [in American society] to limit civil liberties in the name of national security and then years later regretting that or at least rethinking it and wondering if we've gone too far," says Professor Martin.

The Department of Homeland Security says it has recently strengthened civil-liberties protections around Patriot Act provisions, such as the so-called national security letters, which allow the FBI to force corporations and other groups to release information on customers and members without their knowledge.

Mr. Carafano notes that all three provisions at stake in the Patriot Act extension have been found to be constitutional, and no challenges to them have risen to the Supreme Court. It's not clear how those provisions have played into the 36 known thwarted terror attacks on the US since 9/11, but it's likely they played some role in at least some cases, he adds.

"The American people are way over the Patriot Act," says Carafano. "We've all heard the hair on fire, throw the Constitution away debate, and, look around, the Constitution is still there. What you have are individual stakeholders for whom this is a cause célèbre and [who are] appealing to wedge constituencies."

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