Fw: Patriot Act Reform Stands in the Balance: Act Today - FCNL

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie" <kathyguthrie@fcnl.org>
To: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 3:33 PM
Subject: Patriot Act Reform Stands in the Balance: Act Today - FCNL

A bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives last week blocked an
attempt by the congressional leadership to steam-roller Congress into
reauthorizing, or renewing, expiring provisions of, the USA PATRIOT
Act. But both chambers of Congress will act on the expiring
provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act when they return from the
Thanksgiving recess in early December. They need to hear from you
during the Thanksgiving recess (before Dec. 5).

In the past two weeks, the majority party leaders met behind closed
doors and devised a congressional maneuver to force the Congress to
reject modest improvements to the Patriot Act contained in the
unanimously adopted Senate version of the Patriot Act reauthorization
bill. The majority party leaders then added new provisions that make
the Patriot Act even worse than the 2001 version.

In a revolt against the draft "conference report" (the revised bill
to be presented by the conference committee to the House and the Senate
for final approval), a bi-partisan group of senators and
representatives are gathering support, refusing to accept the
secretive, steam-roller tactics of the conference committee's
majority. You can help.

TAKE ACTION: Contact your senators and representative while they are
home for the Thanksgiving recess. As a constituent, your voice counts
more than any others. While these members of Congress are at home,
you have many options for action: speak up at town hall meetings, call
them when they are on talk radio, place an op-ed piece in your local
newspaper, join your friends and call on them or their staffs in their
district offices, or send them a message by phone or mail to those home
offices. See FCNL's web site to find the location of your members'
district offices: http://capwiz.com/fconl/dbq/officials/ Here's a
suggested message:

. Tell your members to join the opposition to the conference report.
. Ask them to send the conference committee back to an open
bi-partisan process .
. Urge them to adopt the preferred Senate version of the USA PATRIOT
Act reauthorization bill (H.R. 3199).
. Tell them about your heartfelt concerns about civil liberties in
the United States in the years since Sept. 11, 2001.

After you contact your members, please email us at field@fcnl.org.
Let us know what you did and any response you received. Thank you!

BACKGROUND:

Just when advocates thought that the Patriot Act reauthorization bill
had reached the end of its legislative process, civil liberties
protectors have been presented with an unexpected opening for positive
action. The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in fear and haste in October 2001
in response to the 9/11 attacks, included 16 provisions that will
expire Dec. 31, 2005, unless reauthorized by Congress. These
"sunsetting" provisions include some, but not all, of the most
controversial sections of the bill. From FCNL's perspective, the
sunsets are helpful because they ensure that Congress examines
controversial provisions carefully, choosing on a case-by-case basis
which provision to extend and which to allow to expire. Note that
these sunset provisions can be extended ("continued") past the
deadline by routine congressional action, so that the deadline can be
easily delayed.

During the summer and fall of 2005, reauthorization measures passed
through the House and the Senate that made most of the 16 provisions
permanent, but also addressed some of the problems with the original
USA PATRIOT Act that the last four years have exposed. Although civil
liberties advocates were disappointed at the modesty of the
improvements to the original bill, the Senate version contained more
favorable provisions.(For a comparison, see
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1509&issue_id=68.)

The House and Senate versions were to be reconciled in a "conference
committee," with members named by House and Senate leadership. The
party split in the conference committee reflects the party split in
Congress, with Republicans in the majority. The conference committee
would, following usual congressional order, issue a "conference
report" containing the final version of the bill, and both houses of
Congress would (usually) vote to adopt the report.

The conference committee for the Patriot Act reauthorization bill has
been no exception - so far. First, the House leadership delayed
formally naming the House conferees for weeks, setting up an artificial
hurry-up atmosphere for consideration of the reauthorization bill.
Then, over the weekend of Nov. 12-13, the conference committee's
minority party members were abruptly cut off from participation in the
negotiations, and officials from the Department of Justice and the
White House met with conference committee leaders. A tentative deal was
struck. The majority party conferees began circulation of a draft
conference report mid-week (Nov. 16-17). The draft conference report
not only ignored the unanimous instruction passed by the House (calling
for the Senate's shorter, four-year extensions of three sunset
provisions), but it also ignored the unanimously passed provisions of
the Senate version of the bill, and even added provisions not passed by
either the House or the Senate. Here are some of the problems with the
draft conference report being circulated on Thursday, Nov. 17 for
review by the conference committee:

. The Senate version included a common sense requirement, not in
the original USA PATRIOT Act, that to get permission to search business
records (including library and medical records), the FBI must offer
some facts showing that the records relate to a suspected spy or
terrorist. Unfortunately, that reform was dropped from the conference
report.
. The FBI currently has permission to issue "National Security
Letters" (NSLs) demanding information from telecommunications
providers about use of internet and phone lines. The Washington Post
recently revealed that in the last year, the FBI has issued over 30,000
such NSLs, a one-hundred fold increase. . The conference report not
only does not rein the FBI in, it adds authorization for the FBI to
issue contempt citations for failure to comply with an NSL and criminal
penalties for disclosing its existence to anyone.
. The Senate version would have renewed the sunsets for three
provisions (including the library records provision, roving wire taps,
and the provision for a terrorism investigation of an individual acting
alone) for four years. The conference report lengthens the sunsets to
seven years from now, thus diluting congressional oversight.
. Although the conference report seems to give the right to challenge
orders for records and gag orders, those rights are illusory..
Under the conference report, recipients of record demands could contact
an attorney, but only limited court challenge would be available.
And, because the conference report gives the FBI a "presumption" of
need for secrecy if the FBI claims national security or other
interests, the right to challenge a gag order (telling anyone that
the order was delivered) is ineffectual.
. Fourteen of the 16 sunsetting provisions were made permanent in the
conference report.
. And, in perhaps the most undemocratic stroke of the conference
committee leadership, new provisions (not passed by either the Senate
or the House) were added to the conference report, including expansion
of the number of crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed and
seriously altering the right of habeas corpus for domestic criminal
imprisonments.

By Thursday night, Nov. 17, members of the Senate and House were in
nothing short of a bi-partisan revolt. Experienced "Hill watchers"
reported that they have never seen anything like it. Six senators
(Feingold (D-WI), Craig (R-ID), Durbin (D- IL), Sununu (R-NH), Salazar
(D-CO), and Murkowski (R-AK)) have vowed to use every legislative tool
available, including the filibuster, to fight final approval of the
conference report as circulated. A bi-partisan group of House members
(Sanders (I-VT), Nadler (D-NY), Rohrabacher (R-CA), Scott (D-VA), and
Mack (R-FL)) joined the Senators at a Friday morning press conference,
standing united in the effort to fight the conference report. They
were joined at the press conference by Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Specter (R-PA), who hinted that he might oppose Republican
efforts in the Senate to cut off debate on the conference report.

This is an historic moment. Please join the tens of thousands of
civil liberties advocates across the country letting their
congressional delegation know that further increases in law enforcement
authority must not come at the expense of U.S. constitutional rights.
During this congressional recess, tell the members of your
congressional delegation that they must resist the conference report on
the Patriot Act reauthorization bill and insist on further bi-partisan
consultation before voting on the measure.

_______________________________________

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