Patriot shame: surveillance unchecked.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - PATRIOT Act - Brief article

WHEN GEORCE W. Bush was in the White House, many prominent Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, spoke out against the intrusive surveillance permitted by the PATRIOT Act. But when the act came up for renewal in late February, Congress voted to leave intact some troubling impingements on privacy.

The provisions at issue allow roving wiretaps on multiple phones, search and seizure of a wide variety of private records (notoriously including library records), and "lone wolf" surveillance of noncitizens not known to be associated with foreign terrorist groups. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who backed limits on these powers, complained to The Washington Post that "some Republican senators" had nixed the reforms. But in the House, which approved renewal by a vote of 315 to 97, there was wide bipartisan support for preserving the law unchanged.

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The PATRIOT Act provisions were renewed on the heels of a report from the Justice Department's inspector general detailing how federal investigators had failed to comply with existing restrictions on...