Patriot Act- Was it worth it?

This story does not appear to be raising as many eyebrows with the American People as the U.S. Attorneys firings. If you care about the U.S. Attorney story, this one is equally important to our system of criminal justice. The basic idea is that a few FBI Field Offices were audited to determine violations of personal electronic data gather tools allowed in the Patriot Act. (i.e. the sections of the P. Act that broadened the 4th Amendendment's unreasonable search and seizure clause or broadened power for national security reasons.) They did poorly, here's the idea:

In a review of headquarters files and a sampling of just four of the FBI's 56 field offices, Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives during between 2003 and 2005, including failure to get proper authorization, making improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records. He estimated that "a significant number of ... violations throughout the FBI have not been identified or reported.

In 1986, Congress first authorized FBI agents to obtain electronic records without approval from a judge using national security letters. The letters can be used to acquire e-mails, telephone, travel records and financial information, like credit and bank transactions.

In 2001, the Patriot Act eliminated any requirement that the records belong to someone under suspicion. Now an innocent person's records can be obtained if FBI field agents consider them merely relevant to an ongoing terrorism or spying investigation.

Fine found more than 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone records through "exigent letters" which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data, when in fact such subpoenas never been sought.

I can not say the Patriot Act is all bad, but this should be a concern to us all. Better administration can solve this issue. Oh, and Democratic oversight.