FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON - As the House of Representatives approved a final set of
amendments to the fundamentally flawed bill to reauthorize the expiring
provisions of the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed
disappointment that the small package of amendments failed to protect the
liberty and privacy of ordinary Americans. These amendments and the
reauthorization bill passed the Senate last week without the changes needed to
ensure these extraordinary powers are focused on suspected foreign terrorists
and not innocent people. The House approved the flawed conference report last
December.
Even some proponents of the compromise agree that more needs to be done to
restore checks and balances. Yesterday, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and a
bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to require judicial review
of the National Security Letters powers made more coercive and punitive under
the reauthorization. The ACLU applauded recognition that the Patriot Act remains
severely flawed and needs to be fixed in more significant ways than the cosmetic
changes approved this month. In fact, the ACLU opposed passage of S.2271 because
it imposed additional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of those who
receive demands of financial, medical, library or other sensitive records, among
other problems in the bill.
The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU
Washington Legislative Office:
"Today’s vote failed the American people and the Constitution. Proponents of
the law claim that the reauthorization achieves key ‘civil liberties
protections,’ but the facts don’t match the rhetoric. The Patriot Act could have
been reformed to protect our security and liberty by focusing the resources on
suspected foreign terrorists but, at the Bush administration’s insistence,
Congress chose to ignore common sense reforms in favor of cosmetic changes.
"Although the debate about this reauthorization is finished, the fight to
balance our security with liberty is far from over. We applaud those lawmakers,
from both sides of the aisle and in both chambers, who stood firmly in their
commitment to the fundamental freedoms protected by the Constitution. Congress
must continue to work to reform the Patriot Act until it is actually more
protective of our civil liberties. Our elected representatives should listen to
the millions of Americans who demand that we both safe and free, rather
than pay heed to partisans in the administration opposed to modest
reform."
To read more about the ACLU’s concerns with the Patriot Act, go
to:
http://www.reformthepatriotact.org
