Patriot Act Expansion Passes Senate Committee
In an end run around the Fourth Amendment, and putting our civil liberties under siege, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence met in secret today and approved expansions to the Patriot Act that wil allow the Government to obtain records without a court order or grand jury subpoena - and more.
The ACLU sent out this press release earlier today, objecting to both the secret hearing and the expanded powers.
"Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order," Graves added. "We can give law enforcement the tools they need to protect us without sidestepping our Constitution’s fundamental checks and balances."
The bill would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" authority, permitting the bureau to write and approve its own search orders for any tangible thing held by a third party deemed relevant to an intelligence investigation, without prior judicial approval. This unilateral power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. This would drastically undermine the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The proposal would also remove one of the few safeguards in place for intelligence investigations. Currently, business records of an American cannot be demanded "solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution." The proposed legislation would delete this restriction and allow records to be sought based on constitutionally protected activity as long as the investigation as a whole is not based solely on constitutionally protected activity.
Proponents of that power claim that this would give the FBI the same power used by government agencies administering federal programs, like Medicare. But these agencies do not have at their disposal, as does the FBI, other tools like grand jury subpoenas or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act search orders. The ACLU noted that Congress has continuously denied this power, long sought for by the FBI, for good reasons. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a member of the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, expressed concerns that this expanded power would give the FBI "carte blanche" to go on "fishing expeditions" without checks against abuse.
The new powers also allow the FBI to snoop into your mail:
The proposal would also give the FBI broad new powers to track people’s mail in intelligence inquiries. It would force postal workers to disclose the name, address and other information appearing on envelopes delivered to or from people designated by the FBI, without any meaningful protections or oversight. That drastic proposal has drawn criticism from within the service itself, including its chief privacy officer.
This is an abuse of power. The Patriot Act was passed in haste, without adequate time for reflection or review. It has nabbed a few bumbling holy warriors but no real terrorists. It has not made us safer, only less free.
Update: New press release from ACLU:
"Today's secret vote was a failure for the Fourth Amendment, the American people, and the very freedoms we hold dear. At a time when Americans from all walks of life are calling for the Patriot Act to be brought in line with the Constitution, the Senate Intelligence Committee went ahead with an unwarranted expansion of the Patriot Act's already intrusive powers."
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