We just got a note that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has not only gotten a draft copy of the new PATRIOT Act, but they've published it online! Sure, Paul Krugman probably got this a week ago, and is probably sitting down over a caramel macchiato, chuckling about the New York Times charging people for the privelege of reading his columns online, and coming up with zingers that will slay -- just slay -- Bob Novak. But see, he doesn't go put the PDFs on the internets like our homies at the EFF. Mad props.

Download the bill and summary in their full, soporific, rights-curtailing, false-sense-of-security-enabling glory (we've mirrored the copies just in case) -- and they're license free as a government document, so feel free to remix!

Sunset Bill Summary

Sunset Bill Draft

Text of the press release after the jump.

Bill Gives Justice Department More Power to Demand Private Records

San Francisco, CA - On Thursday, May 26, the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence will consider in closed session a
draft bill that would both renew and expand various USA
PATRIOT Act powers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) has obtained a copy of the draft bill, along with the
committee's summary of it, and has made them available to
journalists and interested citizens on its website,
http://www.eff.org/.

"Even though Congress is still debating whether to renew the broad surveillance authorities granted by the original USA PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department is already lobbying for even more unchecked authority to demand the private records of citizens who are not suspected of any crime," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The Senate's intelligence committee should focus on adding checks and balances to protect against abuse of already-existing PATRIOT powers, or repealing them altogether, rather than working to expand them behind closed doors."