House Joins Senate In Offering Fixes to the PATRIOT Act

For Immediate Release
Contact: Ari Schwartz, (202) 637-9800
Lara Flint, (202) 637-9800

Wednesday, October 22, 2003 -- This week members of the House joined their Senate colleagues in calling for some reasonable changes to the most far-reaching powers granted to the Justice Department by the USA PATRIOT Act. The new House version of the "SAFE" (Security and Freedom Ensured) Act, bipartisan legislation already introduced in the Senate to fix the PATRIOT Act, has the support of CDT as well as a number of organizations from the right and left. The House SAFE Act, H.R. 3352, was introduced on Tuesday by 10 original cosponsors, including both Republicans and Democrats.

"A growing number of legislators from all over the political spectrum recognize that moderate changes to the surveillance provisions of the PATRIOT Act are both reasonable and needed," CDT Staff Counsel Lara Flint said. "The momentum around this issue is growing, and for good reason -- there should be nothing controversial about subjecting the FBI to appropriate checks and balances."

A new CDT brochure on the PATRIOT Act: "What's Wrong With the PATRIOT Act and How to Fix It," is available at http://www.cdt.org/security/usapatriot/brochure.pdf.

The House and Senate versions of the SAFE Act are almost identical. Both subject the FBI to additional judicial and congressional oversight, while leaving in place the FBI's expanded powers to obtain the information that it needs to fight terrorism. Specifically, both versions of the SAFE Act would:

minimize the risk that innocent conversations could be taped in the course of an intelligence wiretap;
limit the use of "sneak & peek" search warrants to those situations where someone's life is at stake, someone will flee prosecution or evidence will be destroyed, and restrict the delay of notification to 7 days unless the FBI gets further judicial approval to extend it;
require the FBI to submit some minimal evidence that a person whose business records it is seeking is a suspected terrorist or spy before it can get a secret court order to obtain those sensitive files;
ensure that the FBI cannot obtain information about library computer users from the libraries themselves without a court order; and
sunset the "sneak & peek" provision of the PATRIOT Act, as well as three other expanded surveillance powers, in 2005.

The House version contains one additional provision: It limits the definition of domestic terrorism to ensure that political protesters will not be dubbed terrorists.

For further information on the USA PATRIOT Act and related issues, see http://www.cdt.org/security/010911response.shtml.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit organization, is dedicated to developing public policy solutions that advance civil liberties and democratic values in the digital age.

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