Echoes of 1984: Retroactive Criminality

[jwill2017]

Via: https://partisancheese.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/echoes-of-1984-retroactive-criminality/

"From a legal standpoint, retroactive culpability presents Constitutional issues as it’s not legal to apply a criminal statute retroactively. Therefore, the Patriot Act’s intelligence provisions bring up complex legal questions in relation to the State’s authority to analyze old data. If, let’s say, “providing material support” to a terrorist group in the form of Paypal payments is currently illegal, but the said terrorist group wasn’t – at the time of the payment – classified by the State Department to be one, then how can my retroactive actions be criminal during the present?"