PATRIOT Act vs JUSTICE Act

There is currently a bill in place that could replace the PATRIOT Act. Senators Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin -- along with eight other Senators -- have taken the Obama Administration up on its offer to replace the PATRIOT Act by introducing the JUSTICE Act, which would rein in the worst excesses of PATRIOT and last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The announcement of the bill's introduction, along with a fact sheet outlining the bill's details can be found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website where Kevin Bankston has posted about the new JUSTICE Act. The text of the “JUSTICE” of the JUSTICE Act stands for "JUSTICE" Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts.

Now the JUSTICE Act would renew two of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, PATRIOT sections 206 (John Doe roving wiretaps) and 215 (FISA orders for any tangible thing), but would also add strong new checks and balances to those provisions and to the PATRIOT Act in general, especially those provisions dealing with the government's authority to issue National Security Letters. If passed, the bill would also establish critically important protections for Americans against surveillance authorized under the FAA. Of particular importance to EFF's clients in the Hepting v. AT&T case and to the preservation of the rule of law, JUSTICE would completely repeal the FAA provision intended to legally immunize telecoms like AT&T that illegally assisted in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. Last summer when Congress passed the FAA, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated his intention to revisit that law as part of the PATRIOT renewal debate, and we're very glad that Senators Feingold and Durbin have kick-started that process.

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

Still Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) introduction of legislation that would narrow several provisions of the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, including the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA) is a sign that some who voted for the original Patriot Act and FISA are now seeing the error of those legislations. Three sections of the Patriot Act - the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the "library records" provision and the "lone wolf" provision - are up for renewal this year and will expire on December 31 if Congress does not take action. The American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed the new bill, the JUSTICE Act, and calls on Congress to move quickly to pass it.

"Over the past eight years, Congress and the executive branch have allowed for more and more surveillance while doing little to protect Americans' privacy rights," said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The JUSTICE Act is a much needed remedy for the overbroad and out of control surveillance in our country. Given that three of the Patriot Act's provisions expire at the end of the year, it's vital that Congress pass the JUSTICE Act as quickly as it can so that proper action can be taken to protect Americans' privacy rights."

The JUSTICE Act would make vital changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act by inserting privacy and civil liberties safeguards into each law. The JUSTICE Act would amend the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act by establishing a standard of individualized suspicion, mandating meaningful judicial review and requiring thorough reporting on the FBI's use of NSLs to Congress. The NSL provision of the Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI's ability to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit bureaus without prior judicial approval and to impose gag orders on record demand recipients.

The ACLU has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the amended NSL statute's gag provisions in a lawsuit called Doe v. Holder. A lower court ruled in 2007 that NSL gag provisions were unconstitutional and in December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in part, agreeing that the NSL statute's gag provision violated the First Amendment. The JUSTICE Act would restrict the sweeping wiretapping powers given to the government in the FISA Amendments Act passed last year, preventing agencies from conducting bulk collection of Americans' communications. The Act would also repeal a highly controversial provision in the FAA that granted immunity to telephone companies that aided the Bush administration in its illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program.

"This bill will give our surveillance laws the overhaul they so desperately need, restraining the government from unconstitutionally collecting vast amounts of data about innocent Americans," said Michelle Richardson, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Ensuring public reporting is a crucial part of keeping our government's surveillance powers in check. Holding law enforcement accountable for how it uses these tools will not only help to preserve Americans' privacy, it will ultimately keep us safer. Congress must make passing the JUSTICE Act a priority."

To learn more about the ACLU's work on the Patriot Act, go to: www.reformthepatriotact.org.

Do you remember the Patriot Act? Rushed through Congress in October 2001 with little debate, this deeply flawed legislation curtails your fundamental freedoms. And now, just like in 2001, legislation is moving through Congress quickly. But this time, we have a chance for genuine Patriot Act reform. Senator Russ Feingold and nine other senators have introduced the JUSTICE Act, a bold piece of legislation, which effectively reins in the out-of-control government powers embedded in the Patriot Act. Now they need our help to gather more support for this comprehensive legislation.

Ask your senators to co-sponsor the JUSTICE Act.

The Patriot Act gave the government the power to access your medical records, tax records, and information about the books you buy or borrow without probable cause. It also gave the government the power to break into your home and conduct secret searches without telling you for weeks, months, or indefinitely. It’s absolutely crucial that whatever legislation emerges from the Judiciary Committee embraces the strong measures Senator Feingold has put forth by:

--Protecting the privacy of records by reining in the government’s use of National Security Letters to collect the records of innocent people far removed from an actual terrorism suspect.
--Protecting humanitarian activities by preventing prosecution of people who work with or for charities that give humanitarian aid in good faith to war-torn countries.
--Protecting First Amendment rights by requiring the government to convince a court that a National Security gag order is necessary.
--Protecting the privacy of communications by amending last year's sweeping FISA Amendments Act to better protect Americans' phone calls and emails.

Strong measures like these can help finally end the damage done by the Patriot Act. Events are moving quickly. However Democrats the Senators sponsoring the JUSTICE Act are sparring with President Obama and the Department of Justice over the PATROIT Act according to the Huffington Post. When President Obama was Senator Obama, he had deep reservations about the expansion of executive authority. Now that he wields that authority, he's had a change of heart. His former colleagues -- still senators -- have had no such epiphany. Add the PATRIOT Act to the list of grievances that President Obama now needs to work out with his party.

At least he has friends on the other side, however. When Department of Justice officials came to Congress Wednesday to push for a full-scale reauthorization of the expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act, they found more support from Republicans than the committee's Democrats. "I don't believe that subsequent events have proven that there have been any abuses of the act to date," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said shortly before the DOJ representatives discussed some of the documented FBI abuses of the PATRIOT Act. "The provisions of this act did not create new or unusual powers for the federal government," Sessions argued, citing subpoena powers of the IRS and other government agencies.

In the House, Republicans likewise sided with the Obama administration against Democrats. "I don't feel we should break something that doesn't need fixing," Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, dismissing complaints about the abrogation of civil liberties as "hyperbole" that "has not been borne out in litigation." Not that any lawmakers want to completely put an end to the act. Even civil-liberties crusader Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) -- the lone vote against the PATRIOT Act back in 2001 -- is proposing its renewal but with additional checks on executive-branch power, which the White House generally opposes.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), long a critic of the PATRIOT Act, roughed up the Department of Justice, as well, reading the Fourth Amendment aloud from the dais. "This is surreal," muttered Assistant Attorney General David Kris. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) made clear at Wednesday's hearing that Democrats would not rubber-stamp the reauthorization. "We all want to be safe. We all want to catch criminals. That's not the issue. The issue is each of us is entitled to our own privacy," he said. "We have another chance to get it right."

Leahy introduced a bill Tuesday with Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Ted Kauffman (D-Del.) that would modestly expand judicial review and Congressional oversight of the powers granted to the executive branch. The chairman's bill also calls for new audits by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine on the possible abuse of so-called "national security letters," which allow a wide range of government spying on individuals given what both Fine and Kris acknowledged at Wednesday's hearing was a low standard of evidence.

"The cards are pretty stacked" in favor of intelligence agencies who wish to spy on Americans under current law, Leahy said. His bill, he said, incorporates elements of the JUSTICE Act, a stronger reform package released at the end of last week by Feingold and cosponsored by leading Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and eight other Democrats. The JUSTICE Act would add privacy-rights protections to every section of the PATRIOT Act, not just the expiring provisions, and would repeal the Obama-supported retroactive legal immunity granted last year to telecommunications companies that complied with government spying requests.

There would be greater support for the JUSTICE Act if the government was more forthcoming about abuses of the PATRIOT Act, said Feingold. Before illustrating how law-enforcement agencies have abused the spying powers supposedly restricted to terrorist threats, Kris claimed that the widespread FBI abuses detailed in Fine's March 2007 report no longer need to be addressed.

"I think the problems that Mr. Fine found are legitimate. I think they've been remedied," Kris said. But Fine said that while the FBI has reduced its fraudulent use of the PATRIOT provisions, "There does need to be more significant vigilance." In the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) compared Obama DOJ officials to their Bush-era predecessors. "You sound like a lot of people who came over from DOJ before," Conyers told Todd Hinnen, the deputy assistant attorney general who made the case for blanket PATRIOT Act reauthorization Tuesday.

Between the House and Senate hearings, news broke of long-awaited DOJ changes to state secrets policy that would bring the executive branch roughly in line with the State Secrets Protection Act pending in the Senate. Under the new language, Attorney General Eric Holder and a team of other Justice Department lawyers -- rather than a single official -- will have to sign off on any attempt by the military or intelligence agencies to withhold information on the grounds that it would significantly damage "national defense or foreign relations."

"I'm pleased that the Attorney General is moving in the right direction," Leahy said at Wednesday's Senate hearing, adding that he intends to pay close attention to the application of the new policy. But that doesn't mitigate the need for PATRIOT Act reforms, Leahy said. "You and I are going to be talking about this as we go forward," he told Kris. "I look forward to that," Kris quipped.

Therefore now it is the PATRIOT Act vs the JUSTICE Act which puts Democrats at odds with the White House and as usual at odds with Republicans. However it is us the American people who have seen our civil liberties under fringe and seize the last 8 years because of the PATRIOT Act and with us having the opportunity to finally get some of those civil liberties back, we have to now stand with those who support the passage the of JUSTICE Act which gives us the American people some of rights back that were taken after 9/11. So call your Senator and call the White House--202-456-6213--to let them know that you support the JUSTICE Act.

Call the Capitol Switchboard--(202) 224-3121 and let Congress know that you support the JUSTICE Act and they should support it too. Now is the time to finally take back some of our American civil liberties after 8 years of being under oppression and siege of living our lives normally. We have the change to regain some of the freedoms that we lost in the middle of night and the momentum is our side unlike it was in 2001 when the PATRIOT Act was passed and unlike it was in the summer of 2008 when Congress reauthorized FISA after coming off a historic Democratic Presidential primary season. Now with everything being on an equal playing field, we the American people can finally talk sensibly to our members of Congress to pass the JUSTICE Act and give us the American people some of our civil liberties back that have been taken from us the last 8 years. No more government bullying and sneak attacks on us the American people.