BORDC Action Alert
Tell Congress to Send Patriot Act Reauthorization Back to
the Drawing Board
November 17, 2005
"If further changes are not made, we will work to stop this bill from becoming law.'' (Letter to the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, signed by Republican Senators Larry Craig, John Sununu and Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold and Ken Salazar)
Dear Bill of Rights Defenders:
An unacceptable House-Senate USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization compromise bill has hit snags in the House and Senate because it falls short of the limited civil liberties fixes in the Senate bill and even creates new problems. A filibuster in the Senate is possible.
Now is the time to flood your Senators’ and Representative’s offices with calls. Your work, including 399 state and local resolutions passed nationwide, meetings with legislators, calls and faxes, and hundreds of public forums and events have helped put the brakes on a bad deal. KEEP THE PRESSURE ON! Don’t let Congress ignore four years of hard grassroots work and months of House and Senate committee reauthorization hearings, negotiations, and votes.
Go to http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ to find phone numbers for your senators and representative and phone them all. Suggested talking points are below. (We have not included a link for sending emails because time is so short. House and Senate leadership plan to pass a PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill before they leave for Thanksgiving recess this weekend.)
- Fails to ensure a connection between records sought and a suspected terrorist. The bill maintains the current, inadequate “relevancy standard” for records sought under section 215, which requires only that the government claim that the information it seeks is relevant to an investigation, without having to connect the target of the investigation to terrorism.
- Places seven-year sunsets on sections 206, 215, and “lone wolf.” Seven-year sunsets would mean that, cumulatively, we would have to wait 11 years from the passage of the PATRIOT Act until these powers are substantively reviewed. This extension ignores previous, unanimous House and Senate votes for four-year sunsets.
- Expands National Security Letter (NSL) powers. Any business that does not comply with an NSL could face criminal penalties. Furthermore, the report does not provide a meaningful mechanism for challenging NSLs in court, and does not ensure that the information gathered by these letters is destroyed if it is unrelated to the investigation for which it was sought.
- Creates only illusory rights to challenge orders for records and gag orders. Businesses receiving requests for records would be allowed to contact an attorney, but would have only limited rights to challenge orders for records in court. Likewise, a recipient would technically have the right to challenge a gag order, but the court would treat the government’s assertion of national security, diplomatic relations, or an ongoing criminal investigation, as conclusive.
- Includes harmful new provisions. Provisions that were not included in either the House or the Senate bill have been added to the conference report that would, among other things, create new death penalties and seriously alter habeas corpus. Many of the provisions are completely unrelated to the PATRIOT Act and serve to make it a “Christmas tree” bill, violating House rules to pass a clean bill.
For more information, see:
* The 11/17 Bloomberg article, Senators Say Votes Lacking for Patriot
Act Accord: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aV62ogQWNxLg&refer=us
* The 11/17 Washington Post article, Senators Threaten to Hold Up
Patriot Act: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111700844.html
* The 11/16 ACLU memo, conference report summary, and more: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=19407&c=206