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Washington, D.C. -- Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today issued the following statement regarding the debate and vote over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act:
“Like all of my colleagues, I support common sense measures that will help our law enforcement and intelligence organizations protect the American people. For example, I support the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that permit surveillance or physical searches in foreign intelligence investigations where the ‘significant’ purpose of the action is to collect intelligence. I also favor the provisions that allow the sharing of foreign intelligence information with federal law enforcement agencies, or with intelligence, protective, immigration, or military personnel for their official use. These are useful and necessary provisions that have clearly benefited our intelligence and law enforcement efforts without endangering the civil liberties of Americans. We do indeed face terrorist threats and must give our investigative and enforcement agencies the means to protect us.
“However, the bill before the House today simply goes too far in giving federal law enforcement agencies search powers that are too sweeping and will receive too little oversight if this bill passes in its current form, and that is unacceptable. Allowing ‘sneak and peak’ searches to go on with no meaningful judicial review, permitting the government to spy on your library book checkout habits, and sanctioning secret eavesdropping and secret search orders that do not name a target or a location until well after the fact—these are fearsome powers to confer on even the most well-intentioned among us. They are simply too broad, and I fear that in the future all Americans will regret what the House has done here today.
“Finally, this bill is significant for what it does not do: restructure the homeland security grant formula to a risk-based model. Failing to distribute these vital homeland security grants according to risk is like sending hurricane preparedness funds to North Dakota . They may be well-received, but sending them to a low-risk area comes at a price to parts of the country that need it more. Further, the members of the 9/11 Commission recently reiterated their support for a change it the formula and said, ‘it should be obvious that our defenses should be strongest were the enemy intends to strike—and where we are most vulnerable.’ Today, the Congress missed a chance to correct this glaring weakness in our homeland security posture.”
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