Chuck,
You've effectively managed to change the point of my whole story.

Huh? You summed up your story with a comment about how wonderful it was that
the Patriot Act was being used as a domestic law enforcement device.

Why not just remove all the restrictions from the police? Give them unlimited
discretion to behave any way they want.
Why should we burden them with silly ideas that evidence needs to meet any sort
of standards? Let's just go to "guilty until proven innocent", that should make
the court system run a lot more efficiently.