U.S. Department of Justice Reply to Letter Requesting Information on Implementation of USA/Patriot Act From Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers
Below is the Justice Department's reply to the June 13, 20002 letter from House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. and Ranking Minority Member John Conyers, Jr.
The ACLU views the Justice Department's reply as grossly inadequate. Among its deficiencies are:
- The Justice Department's response was more than two weeks late;
- Of the 50 questions asked by the Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department answered only 34. Of those 34, the Justice Department classified the answers to six questions, leaving only 28 public responses. The Justice Department still has not provided answers to 16 of the Committee's questions. On August 20th, Rep. Sensenbrenner said that he would "blow a fuse" if Attorney General Ashcroft did not provide those answers by Labor Day;
- Of those 28 responses, at least five were perfunctory statements that the Justice Department did not keep the records or statistics needed to answer the question. In some of those cases, it is clear that the government could easily have gathered the requested information, even if it had not previously been compiled;
- Much of the information that the Justice Department claims is classified consists of statistical information whose release could not possibly endanger national security or any other legitimate government interest. For example, Attorney General Ashcroft refused to disclose the number of times that the Justice Department has obtained pen registers/trap and trace warrants, used powerful new provisions allowing searches of "tangible things," or conducted searches of public libraries and bookstores.
Justice Department reply (PDF, 1.5 Megabytes)