Statement by Senator Feinstein on the Patriot Act

Statement by Senator Feinstein on the Patriot Act
June 9, 2005

"As part of my effort to oversee the implementation of the USA-Patriot Act, I asked the ACLU, in a letter dated March 25, 2005, to provide an update of their October 2003 statement that they did not know of any abuses of the USA-Patriot Act.

On April 4, 2005, the ACLU published a reply to my letter, in which they listed what they described as 'abuses and misuses' of the Act. I carefully reviewed each of the examples provided in the letter. I also reviewed information provided to me by the Department of Justice about each of the examples. And while I understand the concerns raised by the ACLU, it does not appear that these charges rose to the level of 'abuse' of the Patriot Act.

That said, I believe that we can, and should, make some changes to the Patriot Act to ensure it is less likely to be abused in the future.

While I support reauthorization of the 16 provisions of the Patriot Act scheduled to expire at the end of the year, I want to make clear that I do not support the Intelligence Committee's revised Patriot Act because of two provisions that could be open to serious abuse - the overly broad administrative subpoena and a change to FISA rules that would allow the FBI to conduct investigations using intelligence authorities solely to prosecute criminals.

I offered an amendment on both of these: to limit the use of administrative subpoenas to emergency cases with the approval of a Department of Justice official and to preserve the current FISA language that requires that investigations have as a "significant purpose" the collection of intelligence.

In my view, these are not minor but major amendments that address critical problems in the legislation. I intend to continue this effort in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate Floor if necessary."

http://feinstein.senate.gov/05releases/r-patriot0609.htm