ALERT!  Patriot Act moving toward reauthorization with insufficient protections!

Please Act Now!!  (Your calls and emails DO make a difference!)

Thank Senator Craig for vowing to filibuster if protections for our freedoms are not included in the Patriot Act reauthorization.

Tell Senator Crapo to “oppose cloture”.

Thank Congressmen Otter for promising to vote against the conference report.

Tell Congressman Simpson to vote against the conference report

Contact Info:

Rep. Butch Otter, U.S. House of Representatives, 1711 Longworth Office Bldg., Washington D.C. 20515-1201; phone (202)225-6611, fax (202)225-3029; in Boise: 802 W. Bannock St. #101, Boise, ID 83702; phone 336-9831, fax 336-9891; email: Butch.Otter@mail.house.gov

Rep. Mike Simpson, U.S. House of Representatives, 1440  Longworth Bldg., Washington, DC 20515; phone (202)225-5531, fax (202)225-8216; in Boise: 802 W. Bannock #600, Boise, ID  83702; phone 334-1953, fax 334-9533; email: http://www.house.gov/simpson/contact.htm.

 

Sen. Larry Craig: US Senate, 520 Hart Bldg., Washington, DC 20510; phone (202)224-2752, fax (202)228-1067; in Boise: 304 N. 8^th St., #149, Boise, ID  83702; phone 342-7985, fax 343-2458;  web page: www.senate.gov/~craig/

 

Sen. Mike Crapo:  US Senate, 111 Russell Bldg., Washington, DC 20510; phone (202)224-6142; in Boise:  304 N. 8^th St., #338, Boise, ID 83702; phone 334-1776, fax 334-9044; web page www.senate.gov/~crapo/

 

Details of problems w/ the Conference Report are below

 

The Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill Fails to Protect Americans’ Privacy

 

Background.  Congress passed the Patriot Act, with very little debate, just 45 days after 9/11, when emotions ran high and lawmakers were under pressure to do something, anything, in response.  Some Members of Congress had less than an hour to read it before voting.   Many members of Congress, worried about the potential for abuse, demanded that the government include “sunsets” on some of the most extreme parts of the act.  Under the sunsets, these provisions would have to be looked at again by Congress and either reauthorized or allowed to expire by December 31, 2005.

 

• Regarding Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the so-called library records provision, the conference report does not require a connection between the records sought and a suspected terrorist. Without this fix, this power remains a license for secret fishing expeditions by federal agents to gather literally “any tangible thing” about any American, even innocent people not connected in any way to a suspected terrorist.       

 

• The right to challenge these orders is very limited.  The recipient can seek counsel and has a limited right to file a challenge to the order in the FISA court, to be heard by a panel of judges, specially pre-selected.  These hand-picked judges can only examine whether the order is authorized by Section 215 or is “unlawful.”  This language does not provide the same basis for challenge as grand jury subpoenas and other parts of the bill indicate that this power would allow privileged communications to be gathered (attorney-client/doctor-patient/priest-penitent).

 

• Plus, proponents suggest there would be no right to challenge the gag order that accompanies these demands.  The bottom-line is that allowing after-the-fact challenges to these orders simply will not cure the failure to limit fishing expeditions into personal records of innocent people in the first place-- many businesses will not go to the expense of challenging these orders.
  
   
• Regarding Section 505, or National Security Letters (NSLs), the conference report still does not require court approval and does not require that the FBI have any connection between the financial or internet transactions sought and a suspected foreign terrorist.   An NSL recipient is given an express right to challenge the order as unreasonable, oppressive or unlawful, but many businesses won’t go to court. The ACLU already won a decision that a recipient must have this right, but consumers will never be told that their records have been turned over to the feds.  Plus, NSLs would become subpoenas, judicial enforceable thru contempt sanctions.

 

• Business recipients have a “right” to challenge the secrecy of NSLs but can never win a dispute because the court must accept the government’s asserted need for secrecy as “conclusive” (due to national security, diplomatic relations, or a criminal investigation).  This is plainly unconstitutional under our First Amendment.  In another NSL case, the FBI used this power to try to get computer records from a member of the American Library Association.  The court examined the secret evidence the government relied upon for the gag and found it wanting.  Under the new “standard,” the federal court would be transformed into a rubber-stamp.

 

• Sunsets.  The bill makes permanent fourteen of the sixteen expiring provisions, it puts a new sunset date (2009) on section 206 (roving wiretaps in intelligence investigations), section 215 (the “library records” provision), and “lone wolf.”    Extending the sunset will not protect our privacy for the next four years, while the FBI gathers more records on innocent Americans, and the NSL power remains permanent.  Sunsets simply do not address the fundamental flaws of the Patriot Act.

 

• There are no substantive fixes to Section 213, the sneak and peek search orders.  The bill does not limit these powers expanded by the Patriot Act to terrorism investigations—in fact, 88% of these search warrants have been issued in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.  The bill preserves the catch-all for delays on the vague ground that telling you your home or business is being searched would seriously jeopardize the investigation, which any prosecutor worth his or her salt could fit most cases into.  And there is no real time limit on delay as it creates a month-long initial delay in notice as acceptable, subject to exceptions and an unlimited number of extensions of 90 days each.

 

• The bill does reject the totally unwarranted expansion advanced by the Senate Intelligence Committee and favored by the administration, that would give the FBI the power to write its own subpoenas for any tangible thing the FBI deems relevant to an intelligence investigation, without any prior judicial approval—an expansion to all records beyond the financial and internet transaction available under NSLs.

 

• The call to reform the Patriot Act was led by strong resistance from an unlikely collection of conservative and progressive individuals and organizations.  The ACLU worked with Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (www.checksbalances.org), chaired by former Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), a coalition including organizations on the right, like the American Conservative Union and Americans for Tax Reform, to support critical reforms to protect our privacy rights.  Some  business groups have also called for these reforms including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Realtors, the Association of Corporate Counsel, the Financial Services Roundtable and Business Civil Liberties, Inc.

 

• Nearly 400 communities across the nation (cities, towns and counties and seven states) have passed local resolutions opposing any part of the Patriot Act that threatens our constitutional freedoms.  These resolutions have been passed by communities ranging in political ideologies, from the conservative state of Montana to the progressive state of Hawaii; and from cities as large as New York to small towns like Elko, Nevada.  For a full list of these resolutions, go to: www.aclu.org/resolutions