Harry Reid: “the issue before this body in the waning days and hours of this first session of the Congress is whether the PATRIOT Act…”

“the issue before this body in the waning days and hours of this first session of the Congress is whether the PATRIOT Act should be extended. Why are people concerned about the PATRIOT Act? Let me read an interview that took place, which is a condensation of a long story that appeared in the Washington Post about Las Vegas, NV. Barton Gellman was the writer of the article, and here is what he said: At the end of 2003 there was an . . . alert. One of the reasons was a fragmentary report. . . . [At the end of 2003] they tried [the Federal Government] for the first time ever to create an instant real-time moving census of every tourist and visitor in the city during its most visited period of the year. Forty-four million, 50 million people come to Las Vegas every year. Continuing the statement of Mr. Gellman: They sifted through about a million people who were considered potential suspects to see if they could find any match with any other indicator in their big database of the terrorist universe. So they used grand jury subpoenas, they used national security letters and they got every hotel guest, every air passenger, every person who rented a car or a truck or a storage space, and they made a giant database out of that and started sifting [through] it. In the parlance of the intelligence community, the whole thing washed out. They had no suspects. There was no attack.…”