The Senate has now joined the House in passing the new anti-terror bill we've discussed here and here. In addition to expanding the use of non-judicially approved national security letters (which are like subpoenas) to businesses such as car dealerships, casinos and pawnbrokers, the bill also :

• requires Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a report as soon as possible on what intelligence agencies have learned from their experiences in Iraq. An internal review has been under way. Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have been conducting their own inquiries on prewar intelligence.

• creates a new intelligence office in the Treasury Department to improve coordination with intelligence agencies on fighting terrorist financing.

• creates pilot programs to examine whether analysts from one agency should have access to raw data from another and to improve information sharing with state and local governments.

• authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon. A report accompanying the bill said that research on the programs can proceed even though Congress has prevented the programs from being implemented. But it said any experiments can be conducted only on government foreign intelligence databases. It also required an examination of the programs' legal and civil liberty implications.

The House bill is H.R. 2417, and you can read it here by typing in its number. The research programs authorized by the bill are expected to cost $40 billion.