Intelligence Reform Bill Provokes Question of Civil Liberties
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14-The Republican-sponsored intelligence reform bill that the House approved last week has stoked a fire of criticism from Bay State Democrats and civil liberties advocates who oppose certain immigration and law enforcement provisions included in the measure.
The legislation, which passed 282-134 in a vote mostly divided along party lines, was prompted by the Sept. 11 commission report in July that called for a reorganization of the nation’s intelligence community.
Critics argue that the House bill incorporates only half of the commission’s recommendations and instead tacks on several provisions that would pose a threat to immigrants’ rights and impinge on the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans.
“The extraneous provisions. are some of the most significant expansions of the Patriot Act we have seen in the last three years,” Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said at a hearing sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., on Wednesday. “The House bill also includes the most anti-immigrant legislation Congress has seen in over a decade.”
Edgar pointed to provisions that would relax limits on national security wire taps, make it a federal crime to have one’s name associated with a terrorist organization, expand the number of national security-related crimes punished by the death penalty, establish a required national identification card, make it more difficult for asylum seekers to make the case for admission into the United States and make it easier to deport illegal immigrants.
“These anti-immigrant provisions and expansions of the Patriot Act have no place in any legislation, let alone a bill that is supposed to be implementing the intelligence reforms recommended by the 9-11 commission,” Edgar said.
The ACLU also launched bilingual print and radio advertisements on Wednesday in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, calling on the administration to strip anti-immigration provisions from the legislation before its passage.
Kate Martin, a George Washington University law professor and director of the Center for National Securities Studies, also criticized a provision allowing for an information-sharing database that could be accessed by the FBI, CIA and local law enforcement agencies.
“I think that there is a serious national security concern here that what these authorities will end up being used for is not to identify, locate and focus on the few individuals who may be in this country who are planning the next attack,” she said at the hearing. “Instead, those authorities will first be focused as they have been to date on the Arab community, the Muslim-American community, the immigrant American community, and finally, political dissenters in the U.S.”
Representative William Delahunt, D-Mass., co-sponsored an amendment that would curtail many of these information-sharing provisions.
“We can fight terrorism without undermining fundamental privacy rights,” Delahunt said in a statement last week. “There is no reason to have to choose between security and liberty; if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values we are struggling to defend.”
But while Delahunt’s amendment was acknowledged by the Judiciary Committee, on which he serves, it was not included in the final bill the House approved on Friday.
The ACLU and House Democrats argue that the Senate version of the bill, which passed 96-2 earlier last week, is more in line with the Sept. 11 commission recommendations and would receive broader public support because it does not have the extraneous provisions included in the House bill. However, an amendment sponsored by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, to substitute the Senate language for the House bill, failed 203-213.
All 10 Massachusetts representatives voted for the Menendez amendment, but against the bill on final passage.
A joint House and Senate conference committee is currently considering both versions of the bill. If a compromise is reached, the revised legislation would have to be approved by both chambers before heading to the White House for the president’s signature. Congress adjourned last week for the November 2 elections and would have to be called back if the bill is to become law before Election Day.
But many contend that the Senate and House versions differ so drastically that it will be impossible to pass any sort of intelligence reform bill before the November elections.
Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., accused the Republican House leadership of intentionally creating these circumstances in a statement released after the House vote last Friday.
“It is clear that the House GOP leadership.added highly objectionable provisions to advance their political agenda and intentionally sink any type of meaningful intelligence reform,” Tierney said. “They went against their own constituents and ignored the bipartisan work of the Senate and the 9/11 Commission to craft an extreme bill that will most certainly make a conference committee between the two chambers very difficult.”
