Sununu Announces Safe Act
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu Wednesday unveiled two bills that would rewrite controversial parts of the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Civil liberty advocates called the bipartisan legislation a “wonderful start.”
Sununu and several co-sponsors said at a press conference they wanted to repair parts of the Patriot Act that have the most potential for abuse by the government. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) said the Patriot Act, which Congress passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, eliminated too many checks on the executive branch.
Keeping the county’s security tight could be accomplished without forsaking the rights of the public, Sununu said. “We can do it while protecting civil liberties,” he said.
The White House has stood behind the Patriot Act, and Attorney General John Ashcroft has embarked on a nationwide campaign to defend it.
One of the bills, the Patriot Oversight Restoration Act of 2003, would establish expiration dates for a number of provisions, including some government surveillance methods and so-called sneak and peak search warrants, which allow federal agents to search terrorism suspects’ property without obtaining warrants.
The other bill, the Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003, or the SAFE Act, would re-establish rules eliminated by the Patriot Act that prescribed steps the government must take to gain access to business records. The SAFE Act would also limit “John Doe” roving wiretaps by requiring that targets be identified and “sneak and peak” search warrants by requiring notification of a search within seven days.
Sununu, who supported the Patriot Act as a House member in 2001, called the reforms “common sense.”
“What we tried to do was sit down, put aside all the rhetoric and take a look at what the law really does,” he said.
Civil liberties advocates such as Claire Ebel, executive director of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is more to be done.
“This is a recognition by some very powerful, conservative Republican members of Congress that this law is a problem,” Ebel said, “that it is a threat to personal liberty, that it is a violation of constitutional protections, that it imperils the very society that Mr. Ashcroft purports to defend with this bill.”
One aspect of the Patriot Act that gave the government access to library records concerned New Hampshire library workers, who objected to having to comply with the regulations, Ebel said. The SAFE Act would return to pre-Patriot Act standards and limit access to information such as library records by requiring the FBI to seek subpoenas by providing evidence that the person under investigation was a suspected terrorist or spy.
“I think is it an enormous credit to Sen. Sununu that he recognizes the danger in this bill, not just to Islamic Americans or Arab Americans, but to all Americans,” Ebel said, “because there are no limits to the breadth and the depth of the investigatory tools that have been put in the hands of law enforcement á to investigate innocent American citizens.”
The Patriot Act was handled too quickly and with too much secrecy, she said, and Congress should completely re-evaluate it.
“People are frightened,” Ebel said. “They are angry.á They are up in arms that their individual constitutional rights could be abrogated á by a piece of legislation that they did not know was coming and they have no opportunity to react to.”
