What is the Patriot Act good for exactly?

When reading more in Vaidhyanathan's Anarchist in the Library, I was struck by the timeliness of the discussion of the Patriot Act. Vaidhyanathan used the Patriot Act to show how libraries have been effected by the government's desire to invade our privacy, especially since public libraries have been shown to be how terrorists obtained information that they then used against the country. Vaidhyanathan is not a fan of the act, even going so far as to say:

Five weeks after the attacks [9/11], the U.S. Congress passed, without
debate, and the president signed into law, without hesitation or deliberation a
342-page document that hardly anyone had read completely: the Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot) Act of 2001. The act radically revised
legal protections against government surveillance of electronic communication.
It eased the burden on federal law enforcement agents who monitor Internet and
telephone traffic. And it severely challenged librarians to adhere to their
Enlightenment principles.

Many of the act's provisions are set to expire at the end of this year, and the president wants the law reauthorized without any changes made, except perhaps to strengthen it. The current debate is over how intrusive the law really is or needs to be. Our Fourth Amendment right protecting us against unlawful search and seizure is being called into question. Of course, how often was the Patriot Act even invoked? It's fairly innocuous, and most privacy issues have nothing to do with the act itself. Whether or not libraries have been severely compromised as a result of the act will probably never be known.

Libraries serve as an important facet of our culture. It is unfortunate that a terrorist took advantage of the services that libraries provide, but I hope that they remain, more or less unchanged. I visit the DC public library on a weekly basis to check out a novel or two that I don't have the money to buy. Providing books and Internet services to those who are significantly less well off than I am is important. I don't see the Patriot Act necessarily affecting the services libraries provide and sincerely hope that Vaidhyanathan is projecting a worst case scenario that will never actually hold true.