Patriot activism

EVEN ITS SUPPORTERS AGREE that the most controversial parts of the Patriot Act should be allowed to expire. The debate in Washington is not about its sunset provision but about its substance. On that score, members of the Senate are justified in pressing for further changes in the law.

In a compromise announced last week, House and Senate negotiators said they had agreed to extend some of the law’s more troubling provisions for four years. It’s better than 10 years, which the House version of the bill called for. And it’s unrealistic to expect lawmakers to let these sections of the law expire in three weeks, as they will if Congress does nothing. It’s also worth noting that the deal would make most of the law permanent.

But this is a compromise in name only. The proper response to a bad law is to fix it, not to move its expiration date forward.

If it is going to reauthorize the Patriot Act, even temporarily, Congress should make the law less intrusive. The revised version, for instance, would still allow federal authorities to search a person’s home or business without his knowledge; they will simply have to tell him within 30 days. (The Senate version had called for seven days; the House, 180.) Most troubling, the reauthorization does little to curb the abuse of so-called national security letters, which the FBI uses to demand customer records from businesses. Under the new law, businesses will be able to challenge such letters in court, but they could still face criminal penalties if they reveal that they received one.

The Patriot Act was passed hastily and has often been invoked disingenuously. Last week’s acquittal of Sami Al-Arian, a Florida professor accused of supporting and financing terrorism, shows that even the law’s broad powers cannot make up for a weak case. John Ashcroft, then the U.S. attorney general, made much of the Al-Arian indictment in February 2003, saying the Patriot Act enabled law enforcement and intelligence agents to work together and “connect the dots” to build cases. But as the verdict showed, the kind of dot connecting that intelligence agents like to do, and that the Patriot Act allows to be presented as evidence, does not always amount to legal proof.

Six senators, three from each side of the aisle, have already stated they oppose the compromise. They understand that although law enforcement needs powerful tools to fight terrorism, the American people need -- and the Constitution demands -- some assurance that these powers not be abused.