From a statement today by Steve Lilienthal, Director of the Center for Privacy and Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation regarding “today’s expected mark up of H.R. 3179 — the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Authorization Act for 2005.”
“H.R. 3179 deserves a full, open debate on its merits, not to be slipped through stealthily by being marked up as part of the Intelligence Authorization legislation and then voted on in closed door sessions of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The opinion-making news media ignored H.R. 3179 when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on it a few weeks ago despite the testimony offered by former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), who raised concerns about the impact of this legislation and the USA-PATRIOT Act on constitutional liberties. Now, it appears likely that another committee will decide to put it on the books — thus bulking up the PATRIOT Act’s power — behind closed doors. ”
“Many conservatives are concerned that we are about to giveaway more powers to Federal law enforcement without having provided the necessary and oversight to the PATRIOT Act in its current form. Before giving law enforcement enhanced powers, it makes sense for Congress to make sure the existing PATRIOT powers have adequate oversight and accountability.”
“H.R. 3179 deserves to be referred to the Judiciary Committee where the necessity of its provisions can be debated in an open manner. Amendments, such as the codification of the right of recipients of National Security Letter searches to ask a judge to quash an overly broad request, deserve serious, on-the-record consideration in the manner that only an open committee hearing and vote would provide.”
Let me point out – again, for those folks prone to screaming out “liberal, liberal, liberal” when confronted with criticism of such sweeping surveillance measures – that the Free Congress Foundation, founded by Paul Weyrich, is anything but a leftie organization. It doesn’t get much more conservative than FCF. Well, there is the Eagle Forum. Ya’ll get my point.
Its amazing to me how many conservatives and LINOs ran to embrace the PATRIOT Act and other big government surveillance programs, just because they were introduced by a Republican Administration. These folks know full well that had the Clinton Administration introduced these measures, there would have be rioting in the hallways of the Heritage Foundation. Blood would have been spilled at National Review. The sky would have rained fire and the seas boiled.
Or something like that.