Congressional hearings scrutinize Patriot Act

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Violating the Fourth Amendment?
Federal district Judge Victor Marrero took on the issue of national security letters. He found that a provision in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, later amended by the Patriot Act, violated the Fourth Amendment’s limit on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The 1986 law’s non-disclosure requirement also violated the First Amendment, Marrero said. The Justice Department has appealed Marrero’s ruling.

Laura Murphy, the director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said, “The ACLU is not opposed to the entire Patriot Act.” But her organization wants some provisions scrapped or narrowed.

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For example, the definition of a domestic terrorist organization in section 802, Murphy contends, is so broad that the government could apply it to an anti-abortion group that blocked a street during a protest.

“Are these (protestors) the same kind of people who are going to kill 3,000 people with airplanes?” she asked.

Section 802’s definition of a domestic terrorist organization requires that the group must have engaged in conduct that violates federal or state law and that endangers life.

Concern on warrant requirement
“Section 218 needs to be tightened,” Murphy said. “It makes it much easier to have these foreign intelligence searches used for criminal investigations and gives prosecutors a way to get around a warrant requirement. It’s just too easy to do it under section 218.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D- Vermont explained in October of 2001 during the Senate debate over the Patriot Act why section 218 was needed.

It is designed, Leahy said, to “break down traditional barriers between law enforcement and foreign intelligence. This is not done just to combat international terrorism, but for any criminal investigation that overlaps a broad definition of ‘foreign intelligence.’”

But even as he prepared to vote for the Patriot Act, Leahy called section 218 “very problematic” because it would “make it easier for the FBI to use a FISA wiretap to obtain information where the Government’s most important motivation for the wiretap is for use in a criminal prosecution.”

This week’s hearings will offer one important lesson: assessing the Patriot Act will require a closer look at its predecessors: FISA from 1978 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.

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