Chris Coons Votes Against the Patriot Act Extension
Senator Coons asked the Senate to limit the extension of the Patriot Act to one month so that the Senate could seriously review and revise the law to reflect current lessons learned to scale back some of the broad authorities granted to government under the original Patriot Act:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggfToKCixGg[/youtube]
His full remarks are here. The Leahy-Paul Amendment that he talks about would have reformed how National Security Letters are used and would also revise the “gag” order placed upon those in receipt of the NSL.
Senator Coons:
The Leahy-Paul Amendment also deserves consideration because the last five years have shown us that substantive revisions to Patriot are called-for and, indeed, necessary. I’d like to speak briefly about just one necessary change, those to the National Security Letter program.
National Security Letters, or NSLs, are administrative subpoenas that allow the government to demand subscriber information from third parties without even having to go to a judge. These orders are also extraordinary in that they prohibit recipients from telling anyone of their existence.
In 2007 and 2008, the Department of Justice Inspector General found massive abuses in the NSL program, with tens of thousands of NSLs issued for purposes that had nothing to do with national security. Further, in 2008, a court found that the gag order in each NSL was unconstitutional.
Plainly, NSLs are in need of revision, both to bring them in line with the Constitution and to guard against abuses that have nothing to do with national security. I support legislation that would require that DOJ maintain sufficient internal guidelines to ensure that NSLs are only issued when the agents issuing them state facts that show relevance to national security. I also favor amending the gag order so that any recipient can immediately challenge it in court.
These simple reforms – as well as the others contained in the Leahy-Paul Amendment, do not make our nation more vulnerable to attack. That’s why, in 2010, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress expressing the view that legislation almost identical to Leahy-Paul “strikes the right balance by both reauthorizing these essential national security tools and enhancing statutory protections for civil liberties and privacy in the exercise of these and related authorities.”
This Amendment was defeated, but Senator Coons is to be commended for supporting this effort at reforming NSLs. The Patriot Act needs a great deal more revision and reform than this (really, I don’t see why it shouldn’t just be allowed to sunset at this point) but this would have been a very good start. The Patriot Act was extended this week in Congress, in a low-key bit of bipartisanship across both Houses and with little of the media food fight that marks most of the rest of Congress’ work.
Tags: Chris Coons, Patriot Act
Aren’t smart people just awesome?
Civil liberties is most likely a lost cause. Thanks for trying though, Senator Coons.
The new tools and systems authorized by the Patriot Act (or not authorized but used anyway) are now too entrenched in the intelligence community to be eliminated by the mere sunset of the law.
The surveillance state has gone much further than most people understand (this is an important article; read it all if you have time). What was considered paranoid a few years ago has now been confirmed:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer
IMHO there will have to be something like a Tower Commission to detail the depth and breadth of the surveillance society we have created, and then to start unwinding it with new privacy legislation and oversight committees.
the greatest grab of out civil right ever.
Somone I know said this:
with Liberty and Justice for All, some restrictions apply…….
see Patriot Act for more details……………
and that about sums it up – thanks Senator Coons for trying
Finally! Someone willing to stand up for our American IDEALS vs. the BIG LIE that allows the politicians to keep funding the MIC.
We have 3 more CARRIER groups now than we did when the USSR went belly up.And similar exponential expenditures throughout the other services.
What happened to the money we should save once COMMUNISM was found bankrupt?
Now a group of TERRORISTS warrant these excessive expenditures?
good going Chris! Finally we have a man in the Senate who understands the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and violates the 4th amendment.
While I appreciate Senator Coons pointing out some of the injustices and abuses of the Patriot Act, I wonder why his proposal wasn’t just the opposite. Why didn’t he propose abnegating for a month the provisions of the Patriot Act that are arguably unjust and subject to abuse for the Senate to review them? How is it particularly admirable to extend what is unjust and rampantly subject to abuse for one minute much less one month?
“Why didn’t he propose abnegating for a month the provisions of the Patriot Act that are arguably unjust and subject to abuse for the Senate to review them?”
I heard some of the debate on this, I forget if it was NPR or CSPAN. The Senate was told, point-blank, that if the provisions were allowed to lapse for even an hour, it could set the intelligence community back months or years. There is, of course, no possible way to validate this claim, but nobody wants to run for re-election with that in his opponent’s ads.
Geezer, do you recall if the discussion was about all of the provisions in the PA or just some of them? For example, it’s difficult to believe that the Feds ability to collect intelligence would be significantly hampered if they had to get a warrant before they “discovered” what books you checked out of a public library.
I only heard a bit, Dana, and it seemed to be about the whole package — three or four items were listed. The only one I recall was roving wiretaps. I’m afraid it’s all above my head, as I don’t know how any of that stuff works technologically.
The problem with these techniques isn’t that they’re used to track terrorists. It’s that they’re also tracking peace activists, and probably lots more. This is the most leak-obsessed administration ever, going after whistle-blowers more aggressively than any GOP president has. I don’t think for a moment the administration and the intelligence community would obey the rules — and now that they don’t need judicial approval for wiretaps, I’d bet anything they don’t.
it’s difficult to believe that the Feds ability to collect intelligence would be significantly hampered if they had to get a warrant
The thing is, mearly all possible data is already being collected on everybody. The government has it all or has instant access to it for analysis and inspection at any time. The Fourth Amendment violation is now deeply entrenched as SOP. Warrants are only issued now when a legal cover is needed to use the data in court. Eventually there will be pressure to do away with that inconvenience too.
“[N]early all possible data is already being collected on everybody. The government has it all or has instant access to it for analysis and inspection at any time.”
Collecting it isn’t the problem; the telecoms have been doing that for who knows how long. It’s the analysis, and the ability to do so without a warrant, that makes it dangerous in the hands of the government.
Collecting it is the problem, Geezer – read the Fourth Amendment again.
It’s the analysis, and the ability to do so without a warrant, that makes it dangerous in the hands of the government.
True – but it is the illegal collection of data that makes that analysis possible. No data, no analysis.
The US is now arguing that it no longer needs a warrant to collect data, only to use it in court.
If you read the New Yorker article, Drake testified that US intelligence can search all emails – all of them – as easily as you or I search Google. There is now a pen register on every American.
The government doesn’t even need to work all that hard to collect data – they simply buy it or share it from private companies now.
There is a legal fig leaf that if the government gets the data from a private company, that it is not being searched or seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. But it is. Regardless of what it says in the fine print of the contract, you cannot contract away your Fourth Amendment rights by signing up for a telephone or an email account.
“Collecting it is the problem, Geezer – read the Fourth Amendment again.”
First off, don’t make me laugh by citing the Fourth. It disappeared when they allowed seizure of “drug” assets without trial. Second, my point is that the data was being collected by the telecoms, with or without the government’s consent. No amendment covers a private corporation. As I understand the chain of events, the telecoms agreed to give this data to government to avoid prosecution for having already collected it.
Your legal analysis is nice, but unless you’re a federal judge you don’t get to decide this.
It’s about time that bonehead Coons finally came up with a good call. Anon is right, the 4th Ammendment was sold out long ago. And don’t forget the “inventory searches” police now do at will on cars to be towed, let alone walking the drug dog past the car which the Supreme Court says is OK.
It’s not just the electronic surveillance – the bureacracy itself is becoming entrenched in to ordinary law enforcement and is constantly seeking new ways to expand and justify its budgets. For example, DHS is now turning up in raids on child porn and counterfeit handbags. Not exactly the mission they sold us for the Patriot Act.
Exactly. When you have the data, you’re going to use the data. My point was I don’t want private companies collecting it either.
Good for Coons. You wouldn’t get that vote out of Christine “I took a two week course in the Constitution” O’Donnell.