Pat Roberts Wants to Drop a Nuclear Bomb on your Civil Liberties

While all talk and eyes are on the nuclear option and its "compromise", certain republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee want to drop a nuclear bomb on your civil liberties.

The Senate Intelligence Committee met yesterday to begin hearings on the renewal of the Patriot Act 2. The proposal to expand FBI powers was an unexpected addition to committee business.

From the New York Times:

The central question is no longer whether the government's antiterrorism powers should be scaled back in the face of criticism from civil rights advocates, but whether those powers should be significantly expanded to give the F.B.I. new authority to demand records and monitor mailings without approval from a judge.

Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, believes that those who oppose these changes advocate restraints on the FBI that would "tie their hands unneccessarily".

But democratic members of the committee apparently were not alerted ahead of time to these proposed changes.  

Originally, according to the article, the committee was close to a compromise on the renewal of the Patriot Act. The new proposal to expand the FBI's power during intelligence investigations caught democratic committee members off-guard. This is probably not accidental. From the article:

Some civil rights advocates said they considered the new proposal to be a stealth "power grab" by the F.B.I. and the administration at a time when the Senate had been preoccupied by debate over judicial filibusters. And they said the proposal might dim chances for future compromise and lead instead to a drawn-out legislative battle in Congress.

   

Senator Russ Feingold, though not a member of the committee, has already weighed in on the issue, "We should be placing additional safeguards on the Patriot Act, not expanding it," Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said.

Senator John Rockefeller, Vice-Chairman of the committee, came out strong in yesterday's hearing against the proposed strengthening of FBI powers in intelligence investigations.

"Has the Department of Justice demonstrated to the committee that any investigations have faltered, even for one critical moment, because of the lack of administrative subpoena authority?" Mr. Rockefeller asked.

One witness, Valerie Caproni, the F.B.I. general counsel, said that while the new subpoena power would allow investigators to move much more quickly in terror investigations, she could not point to a specific instance in which national security had been harmed because of a delay in getting records through already-available means like intelligence and criminal warrants.

This hearing was not broadcast on Cspan, and given all of the coverage on the nuclear option "compromise", it's not likely to get much attention.

The committee is scheduled again to meet tomorrow on this issue. Transcripts won't be published, well, could be weeks. We are dependent on the print media for what is going on in relation to our civil liberties.

Here is a link to my diary a couple of days ago on this hearing. It has some links to other articles, and the ACLU, concerning the proposed expansion of powers for the FBI.

I also listed, in the diary, all the phone numbers for the Washington offices of committee members. I know they are all dying to hear from ya'll.

We should at least thank Rockefeller for his strong stand, so far, against the proposed expansion of FBI powers.

•  Again I have to ask

  Is the threat of "terrorists" so great that it exceed that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War?  Because I don't recall a demand for such expansive  police powers to fight the "evil empire" which arguably was a much greater threat to our nation than Al Queda has proven to date.

  by Steven D on Wed May 25, 2005 at 08:57:09 AM PDT

  •  I think the Patriot Act

    is really more of a way to crush normal people who speak up, or ebcome anti-war leaders- or who ant to blow the whistle on a corporation. You know, 'troublemakers.'

    They'll (they = private companies, intelligence services) will have a nice, full dossier on nearly every single move we've ever made.

    Good qay to nip dissent in the bud.

    by grushka on Wed May 25, 2005 at 09:11:42 AM PDT

  •  Speaking of the Soviets

    
        when Khruschev said, "We will bury you", he didn't mean kill us. He meant that the mere existence of the Soviet Union would cause us to  make changes in our goverment such that we would no longer be a democracy. Those changes were happening, slowly, before the fall of the Soviet Union, but accelerated after Sept 11th. Given that Osama Bin Laden is a highly educated man,  had the funding and infrastructure to do much more harm than he did, and is no fool, I believe he attacked in the way he did in order to get us to destroy ourselves with minimal cost to him. So far, it seems to be working.

                                  SR

    by SergeiRostov on Wed May 25, 2005 at 11:31:42 AM PDT

•  Par for the course

  The Justice Department got caught with its pants down when a draft of "Patriot Act II" was leaked in early 2003. Since then, Justice and the GOP leadership on the Hill has been inserting portions of the act in piecemeal fashion.

  The really obnoxious features of Patriot II, like stripping Americans of their citizenship for joining a terrorist organization and voiding consent decrees limiting police tactics, aren't on the table yet, but if there's another terrorist attack, they'll be ramrodded through Congress.

  by Dump Terry McAuliffe on Wed May 25, 2005 at 09:12:07 AM PDT