Senate Votes to Continue Controversial Detention Policies

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/senate-votes-to-let-military-detain-americans-indefinitely_n_1119473.html

If I recall correctly, this was one of the provisions put forth by the Patriot Act - that the military can indefinitely detain anyone, including American citizens, on suspicion of terrorism without trial. Unfortunately, the bill itself is over 600 pages, so I am only able to go on what other people say is in this bill rather than report on what exactly is in it. But my main question here is why anyone would/could support something like this? We've brought up in class the idea of the State of Exception, but what exactly is the appeal? Certainly it can't be security, because the person is endangered now only only by whatever is threatening the nation, but also the nation itself. Back when the Patriot Act was a new thing, a lot of people were arguing if you weren't doing anything wrong, then there was nothing to worry about. However, you don't have to be doing anything wrong just be suspected of doing something wrong. So the American citizens are not made safer by such laws. Personal anecdote, in my High School had the scare of a school shooting. What happened was two students (Let's call them One and Two) were supposedly going to, according to police reports, "Snipe students from the trees with shotguns" and/or "Run through the school in a Nazi formation shooting students." If you have questions after reading that, you should. Student One and Two were the "scary goth" type, wearing chains and writing bad poetry, etc, etc. And apparently, Student Two told a student that he and Student One were plotting to shoot the school. All those who knew Student Two said he was a notorious liar. Anyway, the cops were involved and put Student One on house arrest while they searched for evidence (Reasonable.) However, after two years their lead piece of evidence was a drawing done by Student One of "two people standing back to back, shooting aliens," which the police deducted represented students. Student One was an amateur director and claimed that the picture was based on a film of his called Octoalien or something along that line. The Nazi running/shotgun sniping ws a speculation by the police. Was a two year detention (before any trial) while the police looked for evidence justified? Were we made safer or was this a gross example of someone's rights being trampled?