Tell Congress to Include Checks and Balances in the PATRIOT Act
Before adjourning for the holidays, Congress passed a one-month
extension of the sixteen "sunsetting" provisions of the PATRIOT Act.
The extension was necessary because civil liberties advocates in both
parties opposed a measure (the "Conference Report") to permanently
reauthorize the Act without meaningful checks and balances limiting
the Act's more intrusive powers.
Congress has until March 10, 2006 to try to agree on a balanced
PATRIOT Act renewal bill. Senator Feingold has promised to continue
to lead the bipartisan fight for the inclusion of civil liberties
protections.
Call your Senators and your Member of the House of Representatives
today and urge them to insist on inclusion of checks and balances in
the PATRIOT Act. Put your Zip Code in the box on the right, and
we'll give you the names of your elected representatives in
Washington and their phone numbers. We'll tell you how they voted on
the conference report before the holidays. Congratulate them if
they voted in support of civil liberties and urge them to hang tough.
If they supported the weak conference report, explain to them why
they should change their position and support added checks and
balances.
Background
- The Conference Report
The renewal proposal offered before Christmas (the Conference Report)
would renew all of the troublesome PATRIOT Act provisions that
threaten civil liberties, including the FBI's far-reaching powers to
obtain personal, medical, library and business records without
showing a connection to a suspected terrorist (Section 215), issue
National Security Letters to obtain transactional records without
prior judicial approval, and conduct "sneak and peek" searches of
citizens' homes and businesses. The Conference Report fails to bring
these powers under adequate checks and balances. Here are some of
the key issues:
- Business Records Orders
The Conference Report allows the government to obtain sensitive
records or other tangible things upon a factual showing of
"relevance" to an authorized investigation to protect against
terrorism. The government does not have to show a connection, however
tangential, between the records it seeks and a suspected terrorist.
Indeed, the target of the records request does not have to be
suspected of having any connection to terrorism. The Senate bill,
which was approved unanimously, would have required the government to
show facts that the records were connected to a suspected terrorist
or someone known to or in contact with a suspected terrorist.
- National Security Letters
The Report fails to curb National Security Letters, which can be
issued by FBI agents to obtain records without judicial approval and
without any showing of a connection to a suspected terrorist. If
anything, the conference report expands these powers by providing a
judicial enforcement provision. While the conference report would
have allowed recipients to challenge an NSL, this was not a
meaningful protection for the individuals whose records are the
subject of the request. Recipients of NSLs will usually be businesses
that are immune from liability for compliance with the orders and are
unlikely to expend the time and money to challenge them on behalf of
individual customers.
- Sneak and Peek Searches
The Report allows the government to delay notifying the target of a
search for up to 30 days. The concept of "sneak and peek" searches
was already constitutionally suspect before the PATRIOT Act was
enacted, and the Report's 30-day delay provision is a clear expansion
of the seven-day delay that pre-PATRIOT federal courts had deemed to
be reasonable.
More Information
For more information on PATRIOT, go to: http://www.cdt.org/security/usapatriot/overview2005.php and http://www.cdt.org/security/010911response.php
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