Issues
Civil Rights Protecting Privacy
Read
a Fact Sheet on Domestic Intelligence Wiretaps
The Security
and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act
In the 109th Congress, I was proud to have joined in a bipartisan
effort to introduce S.
737, the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE),
which would make sensible modifications to the PATRIOT Act
that will protect the liberty and privacy of law-abiding Americans
and still allow the FBI to do its job to fight terrorism.
This legislation would amend several particularly controversial
provisions of the PATRIOT Act that permit the FBI to monitor
law-abiding Americans without adequate judicial oversight.
The SAFE Act reins in secret searches, curbs roving wiretaps,
and imposes reasonable limits on FBI access to records, including
library, bookseller, medical, and other records containing
sensitive, personal information about law-abiding Americans.
The Library, Bookstore, and Personal
Records Privacy Act
In Febuary 2005, I reintroduced S.
317, the Library,
Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act. I first
introduce this bill in July of 2003. My bill would amend the
PATRIOT Act to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans
by limiting the federal government's access to library, bookseller,
medical, and other sensitive, personal information under Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and related foreign intelligence
authority. This legislation would require the FBI to give
a specific reason why it believes that the person to whom
the records pertain is a suspected terrorist or spy. My bill
would both allow the FBI to follow up on legitimate leads
and protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
Moratorium on Data-Mining and
Total Information Awareness
The untested and controversial intelligence
procedure known as data-mining is capable of maintaining extensive
files containing both public and private records on each and
every American. Without congressional review and oversight,
data-mining would allow the Department of Homeland Security,
the Department of Defense, and other government agencies to
collect and analyze a combination of intelligence data and
personal information, including an individual's traffic violations,
credit card purchases, travel records, medical records, communications
records, and virtually any information collected on commercial,
public, or private governmental databases.
In January 2003, I introduced S.
188, the Data-Mining
Moratorium Act. This legislation would suspend implementation
of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system by the Defense
Department or any other data-mining system by the Department
of Homeland Security. It would also require all federal agencies
contemplating deploying data-mining systems to report to Congress
within 90 days about any and all data-mining systems under
development or in use and the steps that are being taken to
protect the privacy of Americans. Based on S. 188, I introduced
the Data-Mining Reporting
Act, in June of 2005. S.
1169 would require all federal agencies to report back
to Congress on the existence of data-mining programs they
are currently developing or using in connection to law enforcement
and terrorism efforts.
USA Patriot
Act
Protecting
Privacy
Racial Profiling
Voting Rights
Death
Penalty
Censuring
the President
Detention
and Targeting of Immigrants
Civil
Rights & Civil Liberties Main
|
