[Infowarrior] - House Considers Limiting Patriot Act Spy Powers

[Richard Forno]

House Considers Limiting Patriot Act Spy Powers
	• By David Kravets
	• October 21, 2009  |
	• 6:09 pm  |

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/conyers_bill/
Powerful House members are proposing sweeping reforms to U.S.  
surveillance law that puts them on a collision course with legislation  
in the Senate that favors domestic spying.


Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), the chairman of the House Judiciary  
Committee, proposes limiting government's Patriot Act spy powers.

The proposals (.pdf) come as key provisions of the Patriot Act are set  
to expire at year’s end. The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the  
2001 terror attacks, greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy  
on Americans in the name of national security.

Lawmakers are taking the expiration as an opportunity to revisit a  
number of surveillance provisions, including elements of the Patriot  
Act that aren’t set to expire, including a 2008 law that granted legal  
immunity to phone companies that cooperated with the Bush  
administration’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

The proposals (.pdf) by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John  
Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and Rep.  
Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) include a plan to alter the standard by which  
so-called National Security Letters are issued under the Patriot Act.

Under a provision that is not set to expire, NSLs allow the FBI,  
without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and  
credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues  
about 50,000 NSLs annually, and an internal watchdog has found  
repeated abuses of the NSL powers.

The Conyers-Nadler-Scott package would restrict the government by only  
permitting NSLs in cases concerning terrorism or spy activities of an  
agent of a foreign power. If it became law, such a plan would vastly  
reduce whom the government could target.

A virtually identical proposal by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois)  
failed to get out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 8 after  
lawmakers caved to FBI concerns that the changeover would jeopardize  
terror investigations.

Kevin Bankston, a privacy lawyer with the Electronic Frontier  
Foundation, applauded the latest NSL proposal.

“As currently written, NSLs can be used to obtain the records of  
somebody not suspected of a crime. It’s a suspicionless standard.  
Under the proposal they must relate to an agent of a foreign power, of  
somebody working for a foreign government or foreign terror  
organization, ” he said. “That ensures that there is a particularized  
suspicion rather than allowing them to go on a fishing expedition.”

Conyers, in a statement, said: “Over the past eight years, Americans  
grew tired of the same old scare tactics, designed to fool the public  
into believing that we needed to give up freedom to be safe from  
terrorism.”

Whether these and the other proposals unveiled Tuesday would survive  
the House Judiciary Committee is unclear. No hearing date has been  
set. But the FBI and other counterterrorism agencies are expected to  
pressure committee members to follow the Senate’s path and not  
substantially alter Patriot Act spy powers.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, announced last month it was  
willing to consider “modifications” to the Patriot Act “provided that  
they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities.”

Another of the Conyers measures would nullify (.pdf) 2008  
congressional legislation — which is not part of the Patriot Act —  
that immunized the nation’s telecommunication companies from lawsuits  
accusing them of siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the  
National Security Agency without warrants. The Electronic Frontier  
Foundation sued AT&T in a San Francisco federal court, which dismissed  
the case because of the immunity legislation, which President Barack  
Obama voted for as an Illinois senator.

A similar immunity bill by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) has not  
received consideration by a Senate committee.

The House proposal would also renew, but weaken, a Patriot Act “roving  
wiretap” provision expiring at year’s end. The law currently allows  
the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret court — known as the Foreign  
Intelligence Surveillance Act Court or FISA court — without having to  
identify the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.  
The Conyers proposal, while not requiring the government to disclose  
who is the target, requires the FBI to specify that a single person is  
being targeted.

The House proposal would also do away with the so-called “lone wolf”  
measure that expires at year’s end — that allows FISA court warrants  
for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even  
without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a  
terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that  
provision, but that it wants to retain the authority to do so.

A Feingold measure to do away with the “lone wolf” concept was  
defeated two weeks ago by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Another proposal on the House table is similar to a measure the Senate  
Judiciary Committee sent to the full Senate two weeks ago.

It concerns one of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot  
Act — Section 215, the third and final expiring provision. The section  
allows the secret FISA court to authorize broad warrants for most any  
type of record, including those held by banks, libraries and doctors.

Neither the Senate nor the House require the government to show a  
connection between the items sought under a Section 215 warrant and a  
suspected terrorist or spy. But the Senate version and the latest  
House proposal require such a connection when it comes to library  
records.