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An 11th-hour drive to amend Patriot Act
Congress is set to vote Friday on extending parts of the law, but some say privacy needs protecting.
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The White House sought to make permanent all the act's expiring provisions, but it helped broker a compromise that will do so for all but two: one involving searches of business, library, and medical records, and the other concerning roving wiretaps.
Expanded federal powers to seek library and medical records, Section 215, have attracted the most public concern. Those powers would now become subject to judicial review. But many other features of the reauthorization bill also deserve more congressional attention, critics say.
"The fact that Congress wasn't aware that the FBI has used some 30,000 national security letters over the past few years is an indication that not enough oversight has been done," says Tim Lynch, director of the CATO Institute's project on criminal justice. "The money-laundering sections of the Patriot Act require scores of businesses to track the transactions of their customers and report to the government. It's an aspect of the Patriot Act that doesn't get much attention, but it should. This has huge implications for people's privacy."
Senate and House negotiators say they have come up with a better bill, not a perfect one. "These were long, detailed, extensive negotiations," Sen. Arlen Specter (R), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday on the Seante floor. The fact that sunsets will be four years, not 10 as the House bill specified, "is a major, major, major improvement for civil- liberties interests," he added.
How the law would change
Congress is weighing the following changes to the USA patriot act, Parts of which are up for reauthorization.
• Makes permanent 14 of the 16 expiring provisions.
• Permanently allows intelligence gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to be used as evidence in a criminal prosecution.
• Establishes a judicial review before investigators can seize a company's business records (Section 215). The review is to determine whether the records are relevant to a terrorist probe.
• Limits the use of roving wiretaps (Section 206) to cases in which officials show that a target may thwart surveillance.
• Establishes a judicial review of "national security letters" - FBI letters ordering public and private entities to turn over records and other data about any American. Requires reports to Congress on how often the letters are used.
• Extends the duration of FISA surveillance of non-US persons.
• Requires that people subjected to a "sneak and peek" warrant - in which their property has been searched without their knowledge - be notified within 30 days of the search, unless the case justifies a longer wait. Current law imposes no time limits for notification.
• Places a four-year sunset on Sections 206 and 215.
Sources: Senate Judiciary Committee, House Judiciary Committee
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