Safer Option for Civil Rights

Spontaneous applause greeted President Bush’s State of the Union mention that “key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.” The president quickly went on to declare, “Our law enforcement needs this vital legislation,” and to tell Congress, “you need to renew the Patriot Act.”

That statement also drew applause, but from different quarters. The divisions in Congress over the Patriot Act, even among people who largely support Bush, are real. Lawmakers hastily passed the 340-page measure after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Now that the act’s impositions on civil liberties are better understood, they should be corrected rather than renewed wholesale.

An L.A. federal judge recently declared a Patriot Act section unconstitutional, speaking plainly about how sweeping the law is.

U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins ruled that language barring “expert advice or assistance” to groups listed as foreign terrorist organizations is so vague that it could cover “unequivocally pure speech and advocacy protected by the 1st Amendment.”

This provision is one of many that erode liberties. FBI agents can “sneak and peek” in your desk drawers, e-mail, and bank records or tap your phone and track the books you read -- without ever letting you know. Before the Patriot Act, agents needed probable cause to suspect terrorist activity to get a search warrant. Now they can just argue that the search is “relevant to an ongoing investigation.”

Bush and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft seek even more. They would deny bail to many defendants and perhaps strip citizenship from Americans who support any group the attorney general labels as terrorist.

Many members of Congress supported the Patriot Act only because it required renewal in 2005, after lawmakers had a chance to judge the law’s success and its effect on civil liberties. Yet since the act became law, Ashcroft has largely stonewalled congressional requests for information.

Congress is considering a good bipartisan compromise known as the SAFE Act (short for Safety and Freedom Ensured) that was introduced last fall by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho). The measure, S1709, would add judicial oversight to rein in the FBI’s overly free hand.

The bill also extends the Patriot Act’s sunset provisions, for example requiring periodic reconsideration of circumstances in which agents can read someone’s e-mail or peruse their credit card purchases.

In a letter last week, Ashcroft preposterously asserted that the SAFE Act would “make it more difficult” to stop terrorists “than before the Patriot Act,” and said he’d recommend that Bush veto it. Lawmakers should ignore this bluster as they take modest steps to protect civil liberties while continuing to fight terror.