Date: 2005-07-21
Speaker: ZOE LOFGREN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: 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 socalled 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. socalled. "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 finetuning 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 ovesight. 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 . 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.