>>>>>>
>>>>>Nope, I'm saying everyone gets due process.
>>>>
>>>>So you're saying that all those people who were arrested and put into Guantanamo Bay, who aren't allowed lawyers, who have never been charged with anything, they're getting due process?
>>>>
>>>>Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen arrested in the U.S. and sent to Syria for 'conditioning', and who turns out to be a complete innocent in all this; he got due process?
>>>>
>>>>Maybe the problem is in the definition. How do you define due process?
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Try reading it again. U.S. citizens are afforded due process. Foreign suspects don't.
>>
>>Sorry, my understanding of the Patriot Act is that it's provisions apply to U.S. citizens also. Am I wrong?
>
>It applies, but it doesn't abrogate US citizens rights as it does non citizens. For citizens, wiretaps require a court order. US law enforcement agencies have long been able to hold citizens for a "reasonable period" when they are suspects of a crime, without charging them. What that time period is depends on a case-by-case assessment.

But you keep harping on wiretaps as though they are somehow sacrosanct for all eternity. The patriot act now allows even citizens to be held without legal recourse, or charge forever. there is no provision for a 'reasonable' time. 'Reasonable' is something a court would ultimately decide, but since a detainee under the Patriot act has no such recourse, the concept of 'reasonable' would be moot, even if it were allowed for. There was a time when I would have thought that 'due process' was sacrosanct due to the bill of rights. What makes you think that 'wiretap' won't fall the same way one day.