USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005
USA PATRIOT AND TERRORISM PREVENTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 21, 2005)
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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Chairman, after 9/11, I worked on the drafting of the PATRIOT Act in the committee and in the weekend drafting session, and I voted for the act on the floor. I think it is important to know that most of what is in the PATRIOT Act is not actually before us today. It is only the 16 provisions that are so-called sunsetted, which means that we need to review them and renew them, that are actually before the House today.
First and foremost, as the Justice Department said in their letter to me today, the most important thing in the PATRIOT Act is to help remove the legal barriers that prevented law enforcement and intelligence officers from sharing information so they could, so-called, ``connect the dots.'' That is important. There are other important things in the act.
I think it is worth noting that there are some things that disturb Americans that are happening in the United States relative to the arrest of American citizens and the holding of American citizens without charge, without access to counsel; but they have nothing whatsoever to do with the PATRIOT Act. They are not in the PATRIOT Act, no matter how concerned we might be about them.
I believe, however, that even though there are important components to the PATRIOT Act, there are some things that deserve more attention and more fine-tuning than they have received in this bill.
For example, section 505 of the act grants law enforcement the authority to issue national security letters, which are essentially administrative subpoenas, for all sorts of personal records about anyone without judicial oversight. These records include telephone and Internet records, financial documents and consumer records.
In addition, we enhanced this section in subsequent legislation to ensure that even more records could be subpoenaed from travel agencies, pawn brokers, casinos, car dealers and more; but all of this is without oversight of a court.
Prior to the act, national security letters could only be used to get records when there was reason to believe that the subject of the record was an agent of a foreign power. Not only did the PATRIOT Act remove the requirement that the subject of the record is a foreign power; it lowered the standard by which those records could be obtained to the relevancy standard.
We have not had meaningful oversight, in my opinion, on this provision of the act. Assuming that law enforcement does need the ability to get some of these records, and I do not dispute that, we do need to have some standards in place. As has been mentioned by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), one court has already struck down this section of the act as violative of the Constitution.
We know from our inquiry to the Justice Department that this provision has been used hundreds of times. We got six pages back of redacted records, but we really do not know the full impact; and we need to know more than we do today before we allow this sweeping tool to be renewed.
I also want to mention section 215 of the act. I believe that it may be important to obtain certain records, as has been outlined. But, again, we need to have a standard that is beyond relevancy.
So the question here really is about balance. We need to prevent terrorism, we all agree on that; but we also need to protect and defend the Constitution that has served us so well. So I would urge that we have the oversight that we will need by having some sunsets, and particularly taking a look at the national security letter. We do not need to violate our Constitution to keep our country safe.
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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Chairman, I will certainly vote for this amendment, but I fear that it does not fully solve the problem that has been identified by many. Before the PATRIOT Act, the government could obtain only limited records from hotels, storage facilities and car rental companies, and only if those documents pertained to an agent of a foreign power.
Now, the government can seek any records from anyone as long as it is relevant to an investigation. The FISA court does not really have any discretion to deny these requests and, once they are granted, they are subject to a gag order.
Now, the Justice Department has told us that they have never once used section 215 relative to libraries, and I have no reason to disbelieve them; but the American Library Association reports that they have received 200 formal or informal requests for materials, presumably under some other section of the law, perhaps grand jury subpoenas, I do not know.
The fact is that Americans are aware of this issue, and I believe this is having a chilling effect on first amendment rights in terms of reading and speaking.
I believe it is important that government have the opportunity to obtain records when it is necessary to fight terrorism. I do believe, however, that the relevance standard is too low.
I also believe that when the House that previously approved a carve-out for identifiable information from libraries it spoke about the chilling impact. I believe we have a better way to get these records and also to untrouble readers.
So while I will support the amendment, it falls short of what is necessary.
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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment although it does not make some of the changes recommended by Mr. Scott in committee about ascertainment and minimization that we believe are important. It would allow for the requirement of oversight, which I think is important. The chairman has said many times that hearings have been held. They were, but they were basically held since April. We do have a tendency to postpone our work until it must be done.
One of the things that I hope we will take a look at that has not been discussed is section 209 relative to obtaining electronic information with a subpoena. That is a routine matter that caused no concern because it stored electronic data and that is not new law.
The reason why we need to look at it before 10 years from now is that as technology changes and all telephone communication becomes Voice Over Internet Protocol, theoretically every phone call would be subject to seizure by subpoena, which is not something I think any of us would agree we intend to do. That should be a wiretap standard and it may drift down to a subpoena standard. That is why we need oversight, not because there is a bad guy out there necessarily, but because the technology is going to change and change swiftly and potentially very much alter what we think we are doing here today.
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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Chairman, I would just note that we have spent since 9/11 only a couple hundred million dollars in homeland security to secure our rail systems. That is the real problem here. We spent nearly $25 billion on air security and a couple of hundred million on rail.
I would also not that although I do not oppose the death penalty, I doubt very much the death penalty is going to deter the suicide bombers. I think we need to look at not deterrents but at actually preventing the terrorists from harming Americans by protecting the systems and putting our money where our mouth is and in securing these rail systems which we have failed to do.
As my colleague on the Committee on the Judiciary knows, I also serve on the Committee on Homeland Security. We are well aware of how deficient our efforts have been in this regard. That is the crux of this problem, not threatening suicide bombers with the death penalty.
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