Senate Approves Patriot Act Reauthorization

After months of intense debate, on Thursday, March 2, the Senate voted 89 - 10 to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including a four-year extension of Section 215, which authorizes searches of bookstore and library records. It is expected that the House will vote on -- and pass -- the legislation on Tuesday, March 7, according to media reports. President Bush must sign the bill before March 10.

As reported in the March 2 issue of Bookselling This Week, included in the new Patriot Act reauthorization is a "compromise" reached in negotiations between the White House and four Republican senators who were blocking a vote on extending the Patriot Act because they did not believe the reauthorization bill contained enough protections for civil liberties.

Although ABA, its partners in the Campaign for Reader Privacy, and other critics of the reauthorization bill were unhappy because it omitted a provision passed in the Senate that would have limited Section 215 searches to the records of people suspected of terrorism, the bill does include a number of provisions that at least partially restore safeguards for the privacy of bookstore and library records that were eliminated by the Patriot Act, including:

• Two new procedural hurdles have been imposed on FBI agents who want to apply for a Section 215 order to search bookstore or library records: they must first obtain the permission of one of three top officials -- the director or deputy director of the FBI or the Executive Assistant Director of National Security; they must also present a statement of facts justifying the relevance of their request to a judge in the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
  
  
• Booksellers and librarians who receive a Section 215 order have been granted new rights: the right to consult an attorney; the right to challenge the order in the FISA court, and, a year after receiving the order, the right to challenge the "gag" that prohibits revealing the order to anyone other than a lawyer.
  
  
• Finally, the public has gained the right to learn whether Section 215 is being abused: the Inspector General of the Justice Department will conduct a review of the use of Section 215 since 2001 and report publicly whether any abuses have occurred. In addition, the Justice Department must annually report the number of bookstore and library searches that have occurred under Section 215.

Moreover, further modifications of the Patriot Act are not out of the question, according to AP, which noted that on Tuesday, while urging the Senate to pass the Act, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stressed that further changes needed to be made to the legislation. Pointing out that the issue was not yet concluded, Specter said that he is planning to introduce more legislation and hearings regarding restoring "House-rejected curbs on government power" at a future date, AP reported. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who led the unsuccessful effort to oppose the compromise in the Senate, also promised to continue the fight to add safeguards for civil liberties.