And which onerous parts of the Patriot Act were actually repealed?
Well actualy not too many, but some of the authority has been reduced.
In fact just this month it finaly became legal to talk about the FBI abusing you or asking for, siezing, or otherwise obtaining records such as ISP records!
Previously it was a crime to mention it even happened if they gave you a "National Security Letter." Like has been done to hundreds of thousands of people. Essentialy when the government gave that letter to say your ISP, or say TheHighRoad or anyplace, it would be illegal for them to even mention it.
No longer!
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/38113prs20081215.html
Of course every single thing online is still recorded, and most phone calls and internet traffic goes through thousands of NarusInsight systems.
However it is illegal to challenge that or bring lawsuit for that as the government has been declared protected under "Soveriegn Immunity" in the Hepting vs AT&T decision. The final appeals in many cases recently failed, the government victorious.
The actions of those involved have been made legal as they were retroactively granted immunity under the FISA Amendment of 2008.
There is secret police, there is widespread illegal to challenge surveillance, and the average person is totaly ignorant.
The ACLU, the EFF, and many others have brought numerous class action lawsuits. They were defeated with "sovereign immunity".
None of the big companies are even legaly allowed to discuss thier involvment, barred from talking or even cooperating with court.
Here is some official responses to the court ordered investigation that are a delight to read. Essentialy they regret to inform you that they cannot talk about any such thing because it would be a violation of law to discuss those things they cannot acknowledge. There is dozens of such replies, but you should enjoy these because of thier location. They may not last long on the official .gov site:
http://markey.house.gov/docs/telecomm/ATT wiretapping response_101207.pdf
http://markey.house.gov/docs/telecomm/Qwest wiretapping response_101207.pdf
http://markey.house.gov/docs/telecomm/Verizon_wiretaping_response_101207.pdf
As I said there is numerous suits about this and related wiretapping issues (they are not all the same, but they are excused under the same laws.) They have essentialy made it illegal to investigate, and anyone who discloses details about what is being done is violating federal law.
If you want to just get started in sorta understanding the extent, start here:
http://www.eff.org/nsa/hepting
There is literaly cases all over the nation which have been dropped because it is illegal to review them, and everyone is immune to subpoenas if the government says so.
I could cite literaly hundreds of pages of information, but I don't want to take things too off topic.
All I will say is many of the massive purchases of huge, and I mean immense data storage centers across the nation by government, combined with the NarusInsight installed in the backbones of most communications systems means the majority of electronic data is monitored. It is of course too much for humans to monitor, so only things they take additional interest in are reviewed after they have already been recorded automaticly.
It is not just phone records, it is the actual data transfered itself in real time that is recorded and electronicly reviewed through NarusInsight, and stored in data warehouses across the nation.
The Gestapo could never in thier wildest dreams imagined the extent of what is possible and being done today.