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ask.heather@mail.house.gov
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In Washington DC
442 Cannon House
Office Building
Washington, DC
20515
202-225-6316 Phone
202-225-4975 Fax |
In Albuquerque
20 First Plaza NW
Suite 603
Albuquerque, NM
87102
505-346-6781 Phone
505-346-6723 Fax |  |
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Congresswoman Heather Wilson, First Congressional District of New Mexico
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| Wilson: House Reauthorizes Patriot Act |
July 22, 2005 |
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| Subcommittee Chair: Bill Crucial to Preventing Terrorist Attacks
Washington, DC – Congresswoman Heather Wilson supported the USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005 (H.R. 3199) which passed the U.S. House of Representatives 257-171 late Thursday.
Wilson, chair of the Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the Patriot Act is a crucial part of the effort to prevent terrorist attacks on our soil, and gives our law enforcement important tools they need.
“The Patriot Act is an effort to give law enforcement the tools to prevent – not just prosecute -- terrorist attacks,” Wilson said. “Our nation would be less secure without the Patriot Act.”
The bill establishes penalties for crimes committed by terrorists, recognizes new threats and technologies, provides tools to fight terrorism and facilitates cooperation among law enforcement agencies investigating terrorist threats.
“The tools we’ve put in place are identical to the tools law enforcement has had for a long time in criminal cases,” Wilson said. “There are a number of myths about this bill, unfortunately, one of which is that a local sheriff can walk into a library and demand to see your records – far from it. In fact, to date, no misuses of the Patriot Act have been brought to the attention of Congress despite more than 15 open hearings.”
The reauthorization would keep in place 14 of 16 expiring or “sunset” provisions in the Patriot Act. The Intelligence Committee, on which Wilson serves, has jurisdiction over about half of those provisions. The other two provisions are extended for the next 10 years.
Wilson said the Patriot Act is key to taking down the often-mentioned "wall" that kept the FBI and intelligence agencies from sharing information that could help them “connect the dots” and detect and disrupt potential attacks.
“In many ways the Patriot Act modernized existing laws that had not kept up with technology. It allowed law enforcement to use tools that could be applied to “ordinary” crimes like drug trafficking, but that were not available for some foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigations,” Wilson said. “I believe the Act has proven important to national security; without it law enforcement and intelligence officials would have a harder time keeping us safe, and international terrorists would have an easier time doing business in our homeland.”
The Facts about Library Records & Other Provisions
Section 215 of the Act is entitled “Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” The section allows national security investigators with a court order to order the production of the same kinds of tangible things, such as business records, that prosecutors have long been able to acquire through grand jury subpoenas in criminal investigations. Orders requesting the production of records under section 215 are actually more protective of civil liberties than are grand jury subpoenas. To obtain orders under section 215 investigators must first obtain a court order. Grand jury subpoenas used for criminal investigations, by comparison, do not require prior judicial approval.
The Attorney General recently declassified the fact that the FISA Court has issued 35 orders requiring the production of tangible things under section 215 from the effective date of the Act through March 30, 2005. None of those orders were issued to libraries or booksellers, and none were for medical or gun records. The provision to date has been used only to order the production of driver license records, hotel and motel records, apartment leasing records and subscriber information, such as names and addresses, for telephone numbers captured through court-authorized wire taps.
Obtaining business records in the support of criminal investigations is a long-standing tool of law enforcement. Ordinary grand juries for years have issued subpoenas to all manner of business including libraries and bookstores, for records relevant to criminal inquiries. Under standard criminal cases the records of a bookseller were obtained to identify a suspect responsible for a number of bombings. Miami Beach library records were subpoenaed in the Versace murder case. Manhattan public library records were subpoenaed in the Zodiac gunman investigation.. None of these cases used provisions of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, but rather long accepted and proven methods for criminal investigations.
The bill reauthorizing the Patriot Act adds provides for additional oversight and protection under orders issued under Section 215. It demands authorities a) establish a relevance standard to definitively ensure that the orders are relevant to an ongoing investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities; b) ensures judges have the discretion to modify requested orders; c) provides that the recipient of an order may discuss the order with an attorney and may challenge the order, and d) creates a panel of judges to review challenges to any Section 215 orders.
Investigative Tools
The Patriot Act increased penalties for some Federal crimes and established some new ones, such as a terrorist attack on a mass transit system. It removed the statute of limitations for the most serious terrorism offenses. It allowed "roving" wiretaps in these national security investigations, applied to a suspect rather than one at a time to each cell phone he might use. These wiretaps were already available to law enforcement for investigating racketeering or drug crimes, but not for national security investigations. The Act also helped get rid of loopholes and weak points in money-laundering statutes. Though it is hard to entirely prevent money being funneled into or out of the country for terrorist purposes, it is much easier to detect after the Patriot Act, and much easier to hold perpetrators accountable. For example, the Patriot Act helped prosecutors gain a conviction of an individual trying to move money illegally to buy a missile that could shoot down a commercial airliner.
Warrants
Section 213 is entitled “Authority for delaying notice of the execution of a warrant.” Delayed notification warrants, so called “sneak and peek warrants,” are a long-existing, crime-fighting tool upheld by the courts nationwide for decades in organized crime, drug cases and child pornography. Section 213 does not expand the government’s ability to execute criminal search warrants, but rather codifies the authority law enforcement already had for decades. Because of the differences between jurisdictions, the law was a mix of inconsistent standards that varied widely across the country. This lack of uniformity hindered the investigation of complex terrorism cases that can frequently also span the country. The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the Fourth Amendment does not require law enforcement to give immediate notice of the execution of a search warrant.
An issuing court may order delaying the notice of a search for a reasonable period of time if it finds reasonable cause to believe that notification may result in (a) endangering the life or safety of an individual, (b) risk the flight from prosecution, (c) destruction or tampering with evidence, (d) intimidation of potential witnesses, or (e) otherwise seriously jeopardize an investigation or unduly delay a trial. The Department of Justice has testified about specific examples where Section 213 was instrumental in cases including one involving confirmation of a subject operating a money exchange that was funneling terrorism funds to the Mideast and another that resulted in the confiscation of over 225 kilograms of drugs.
It is important to recognize that delayed notice search warrants do still require notification after the “reasonable time.” It is also important to point out that the inherent checks and balances built into the system for issuing these search warrants seem to be working. This is evidenced by the fact that in during comparable periods of time, the number of delayed-notice search warrants issued by the federal government numbered approximately 60 vs. all search warrants issued numbering about 32,500. This means that delayed-notice search warrants represent only about 0.2% of all search warrants issued. And each of these warrants requires the approval of a judge.
Liability
Finally, Section 223 of the Patriot Act allows people to sue the federal government for any disclosures of sensitive information without authorization. There have been no lawsuits under the section.
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