Patriot Act Post-Mortem

On March 9 President Bush signed into law the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act, officially ending an extended campaign by civil liberties groups to put some limits on the expansive powers handed to the President on a silver platter six weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bush and the Justice Department's press office touted the bill's "safeguards for civil liberties," and Representative James Sensenbrenner Jr. claimed to find thirty civil liberties protections in the law. But no one should be fooled: This was a bitter disappointment for civil liberties proponents. So what went wrong?

It's not for lack of trying. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee launched an impressive grassroots campaign almost immediately after the Patriot Act was enacted; eventually eight states and nearly 400 towns, cities and counties passed resolutions condemning the act's civil liberties abuses. The ACLU and others entered into coalitions with conservative groups in hopes of pulling a Republican Congress along. Unlike in 2001, this time Congress held multiple hearings before acting. And the disclosure in December that President Bush had authorized warrantless wiretapping of Americans for years showed once again that this is not an executive worthy of trust with open-ended powers.

But in the end, Congress voted to extend all sixteen provisions that were originally set to expire on December 31, making only minor modifications to a handful. The new law, for example, requires the FBI director or deputy director to approve requests for library and medical records, and permits recipients of such "Section 215" orders to disclose them to lawyers to challenge them in court. But the Section 215 power remains incredibly broad; it doesn't even require the government to show that the person whose records are sought has any connection to terrorist activity.

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