Along with the possiblity of losing your citizenship if you’re found to have contributed “material support” to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be “terrorist,” this does what many feared:

…many of PATRIOT I’s “sunset provisions” � stipulating that the expanded new enforcement powers would be rescinded in 2005 � would be erased from the books, cementing Ashcroft’s rushed legislation in the law books. As UPI noted March 10, “These sunset provisions were a concession to critics of the bill in Congress.”

The act was leaked a couple of months ago, and quickly denied as “just an early draft.” But this article points out that, just as Patriot 1 was rushed through after 9/11, “if 10,000 residents of Los Angeles had been vaporized by a “suitcase nuke” in late January, it is reasonable to assume that the then-secret proposal would have been speed-delivered for a congressional vote, even though Congress has not so far participated in drafting the legislation.”