September, 17 2009, 04:02pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Zach Lowe (Feingold) - (202) 224-8657
Max Gleischman (Durbin) - (202) 228-5244
Patrick Devlin (Tester) - (202) 224-2644
Marissa Padilla (Udall) - (202) 224-6621
Jude McCartin (Bingaman) - (202) 224-1804
Will Wiquist (Sanders) - (202) 228-6357
Jesse Broder Van Dyke (Akaka) - (202) 224-7045
Mary Conley (Wyden) - (202) 224-3789
Senators Introduce PATRIOT Act Fixes to Safeguard Americans' Rights
JUSTICE Act, Introduced on Constitution Day 2009, Would Fix Long Standing Problems with the PATRIOT Act and Other Surveillance Laws
WASHINGTON
U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dick Durbin
(D-IL), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeff Bingaman
(D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Ron
Wyden (D-OR) have introduced legislation to fix problems with surveillance
laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens. The
Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act
would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other
surveillance authorities to protect Americans' constitutional rights,
while preserving the powers of our government to fight terrorism.
The
JUSTICE Act reforms include more effective checks on government searches of
Americans' personal records, the "sneak and peek" search
provision of the PATRIOT Act, "John Doe" roving wiretaps and other
overbroad authorities. The bill will also reform the FISA Amendments Act,
passed last year, by repealing the retroactive immunity provision, preventing
"bulk collection" of the contents of Americans' international
communications, and prohibiting "reverse targeting" of innocent
Americans. And the bill enables better oversight of the use of National
Security Letters (NSLs) after the Department of Justice Inspector General
issued reports detailing the misuse and abuse of the NSLs. The Senate
Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 23rd, on reauthorization
of the USA PATRIOT Act.
"Every
single member of Congress wants to give our law enforcement and intelligence
officials the tools they need to keep Americans safe," said Feingold.
"But with the PATRIOT Act up for reauthorization, we should take this opportunity
to fix the flaws in our surveillance laws once and for all. The JUSTICE
Act permits the government to conduct necessary surveillance, but within a
framework of accountability and oversight. It ensures both that our
government has the tools to keep us safe, and that the privacy and civil
liberties of innocent Americans will be protected. When he was in the Senate,
President Obama was a strong ally on these issues, and I look forward to
working with his administration to find common ground on commonsense
reforms."
"The Government must
use every legal tool available to protect us from the threat of global
terrorism. But when those tools override Americans' fundamental rights
and liberties, we run the very real risk of never getting them back," Durbin
said. "As we move toward reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act,
we're proposing commonsense changes to better protect our most basic
constitutional rights. Our bill strikes a careful balance between the law
enforcement powers needed to combat terrorism and the legal protections
required to safeguard American liberties."
"Like a lot of
Montanans, I have serious concerns about the PATRIOT Act and how it was
implemented," Tester said. "What this bill will do is
add commonsense so we can fight terrorism without ignoring the Constitution and
without invading the privacy and civil rights of law-abiding Americans."
"In
recent years, I believe our government has failed to protect the constitutional
right to privacy for American citizens," Tom Udall said.
"The JUSTICE Act strikes the right balance between respecting the needs
of our law enforcement to pursue suspected terrorists and upholding the rights
of law-abiding citizens to live free from unnecessary government intrusion in
their lives. I firmly believe we can keep our nation secure without infringing
on the inherent rights of the American people. "
"We must provide law
enforcement with the tools they need to protect our country, and do so in a way
that also safeguards Americans' rights. This legislation addresses
both of these important objectives by ensuring our security and upholding our
cherished constitutional protections," Bingaman said.
"Every American
understands that we have got to do every single thing we can to protect the
American people from terrorist attacks. There is no debate about that. Some of
us believe, however, that we can be successful in doing that while we uphold
the rule of law, while we uphold the Constitution of this country, which has
made us the envy of the world," Sanders said.
Senator Akaka said: "The JUSTICE Act will allow intelligence
agents to monitor terrorism suspects while putting checks in place to ensure
that law-abiding Americans' privacy and civil liberties are
protected."
"The
JUSTICE Act rights some of the basic wrongs of the PATRIOT
Act, which became a poster child for the Bush Administration's lack of
respect for Americans' privacy rights," said Wyden.
"This bill is designed to keep every law-abiding American free from
arbitrary government surveillance. At the same time, it gives law
enforcement the agility needed to go after actual terrorists and spies who
would do our country harm."
Fact Sheet JUSTICE Act Of 2009
The
Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE)
Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA
Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect the constitutional
rights of Americans while ensuring the government has the powers it needs to
fight terrorism and collect intelligence.
Title I - Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of
Americans' Records
Sections
101-106 - National Security Letters
The
bill rewrites the National Security Letter (NSL) statutes to ensure the FBI can
obtain basic information without a court order, but also adds reasonable
safeguards to ensure NSLs are only used to obtain records of people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage, and to provide
meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of NSLs and associated gag
orders.
Section 107 - Section 215 Orders
The bill would reauthorize
the use of Section 215 business records orders under FISA, but with additional
checks and balances to ensure these orders are only used to obtain records of
people who have some connection to terrorism or
espionage, and to provide meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial
review of Section 215 orders and associated gag orders.
Title II -
Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans' Homes
Section 201 -
"Sneak & Peek" Searches
The
bill would retain the Patriot Act's authorization of "sneak and
peek" criminal searches but eliminate the overbroad catch-all provision
that allows these secret searches in virtually any criminal case. It
would shorten the presumptive time limits for notification, and create a
statutory exclusionary rule.
Title III - Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of
Americans' Communications
Section
301 - FISA Roving Wiretaps
The
bill would reauthorize roving FISA wiretaps, but eliminate the possibility of
"John Doe" roving
wiretaps that identify neither the person nor the phone to be wiretapped.
It would require agents to ascertain the presence of the target of a roving
wiretap before beginning surveillance.
Section 302 - Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices
The bill would retain the
Patriot Act's expansion of the FISA and criminal pen/trap authorities to
cover electronic communications, but would allow
pen/traps to be used only to obtain information about people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage. It
would impose additional procedural safeguards to serve as a check on these
authorities.
Section 303 - Telecommunications Immunity
The bill would repeal the
retroactive immunity provision in the FISA Amendments Act.
Section 304 - Bulk Collection
The bill retains the new
warrantless authorities in the FISA Amendments Act but would prevent the
government from using that law to conduct "bulk collection" of the
contents of communications, including all communications between the United
States and the rest of the world.
Section 305 - Reverse Targeting
The bill would ensure that
the overseas warrantless collection authorities of the FISA Amendments Act are
not used as a pretext to target Americans in the U.S.
Section 306 - Use of Unlawfully Obtained Information
The bill would limit the
government's use of information about Americans obtained under FISA
Amendments Act procedures that the FISA Court later determines to be unlawful,
while giving the court flexibility to allow such information to be used in
appropriate cases.
Section 307 - Protections for International Communications of
Americans
The bill would amend the FISA
Amendments Act to create safeguards for communications not related to terrorism
that the government knows have one end in the United States.
Section 308 - Computer Trespass
The bill would guard against
abuse of a warrantless surveillance authority in the Patriot Act that allows
computer owners who are subject to denial of service attacks or other episodes
of hacking to give the government permission to monitor trespassers on their
systems.
Title IV -
Improvements to Further Congressional and Judicial Oversight
Section 401 - FISA
Public Reporting
The bill would require
limited additional public reporting on the use of FISA.
Section 402 - Use of
FISA Evidence
The bill would apply the
Classified Information Procedures Act to the use of FISA evidence in criminal cases,
and allow the use of protective orders and other security measures in civil
cases, to ensure that courts have discretion to allow litigants access to
information where appropriate while still protecting sensitive information.
Section 403 -
Nationwide Court Orders
The bill would permit a
recipient of a nationwide court order to challenge it either in the district
where it was issued or in the district where the recipient is located.
Title V -
Improvements to Further Effective, Focused Investigations
Section 501 - Domestic Terrorism
The Patriot Act's
overbroad definition of domestic terrorism could cover acts of civil
disobedience by political organizations. The bill would limit the
qualifying offenses for domestic terrorism to those that constitute a federal
crime of terrorism.
Section 502 - Material Support
The bill would amend the
overly broad criminal definition of material support for terrorism by
specifying that a person must know or intend the support provided will be used
for terrorist activity.
LATEST NEWS
Critics Blast 'Reckless and Impossible' Bid to Start Operating Mountain Valley Pipeline
"The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over," said one environmental campaigner.
Apr 23, 2024
Environmental defenders on Tuesday ripped the company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline for asking the federal government—on Earth Day—for permission to start sending methane gas through the 303-mile conduit despite a worsening climate emergency caused largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC sent a letter Monday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Secretary Debbie-Anne Reese seeking final permission to begin operation on the MVP next month, even while acknowledging that much of the Virginia portion of the pipeline route remains unfinished and developers have yet to fully comply with safety requirements.
"In a manner typical of its ongoing disrespect for the environment, Mountain Valley Pipeline marked Earth Day by asking FERC for authorization to place its dangerous, unnecessary pipeline into service in late May," said Jessica Sims, the Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices.
"MVP brazenly asks for this authorization while simultaneously notifying FERC that the company has completed less than two-thirds of the project to final restoration and with the mere promise that it will notify the commission when it fully complies with the requirements of a consent decree it entered into with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall," she continued.
"Requesting an in-service decision by May 23 leaves the company very little time to implement the safety measures required by its agreement with PHMSA," Sims added. "There is no rush, other than to satisfy MVP's capacity customers' contracts—a situation of the company's own making. We remain deeply concerned about the construction methods and the safety of communities along the route of MVP."
Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition—which called MVP's request "reckless and impossible"—said in a statement that "we are watching our worst nightmare unfold in real-time: The reckless MVP is barreling towards completion."
"During construction, MVP has contaminated our water sources, destroyed our streams, and split the earth beneath our homes. Now they want to run methane gas through their degraded pipes and shoddy work," Chisholm added. "The MVP is a glaring human rights violation that is indicative of the widespread failures of our government to act on the climate crisis in service of the fossil fuel industry."
POWHR and activists representing frontline communities affected by the pipeline are set to take part in a May 8 demonstration outside project financier Bank of America's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Appalachian Voices noted that MVP's request comes days before pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream is set to release its 2024 first-quarter earnings information on April 30.
MVP is set to traverse much of Virginia and West Virginia, with the Southgate extension running into North Carolina. Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other pipeline proponents fought to include expedited construction of the project in the debt ceiling deal negotiated between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year.
On Monday, climate and environmental defenders also petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging FERC's approval of the MVP's planned Southgate extension, contending that the project is so different from original plans that the government's previous assent is now irrelevant.
"Federal, state, and local elected officials have spoken out against this unneeded proposal to ship more methane gas into North Carolina," said Sierra Club senior field organizer Caroline Hansley. "The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over. After MVP Southgate requested a time extension for a project that it no longer plans to construct, it should be sent back to the drawing board for this newly proposed project."
David Sligh, conservation director at Wild Virginia, said: "Approving the Southgate project is irresponsible. This project will pose the same kinds of threats of damage to the environment and the people along its path as we have seen caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline during the last six years."
"FERC has again failed to protect the public interest, instead favoring a profit-making corporation," Sligh added.
Others renewed warnings about the dangers MVP poses to wildlife.
"The endangered bats, fish, mussels, and plants in this boondoggle's path of destruction deserve to be protected from killing and habitat destruction by a project that never received proper approvals in the first place," Center for Biological Diversity attorney Perrin de Jong said. "Our organization will continue fighting this terrible idea to the bitter end."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Seismic Win for Workers': FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses
Advocates praised the FTC "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
Apr 23, 2024
U.S. workers' rights advocates and groups celebrated on Tuesday after the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a ban on most noncompete clauses, which Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khansaid "keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism."
"The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market," Khan added, pointing to the commission's estimates that the policy could mean another $524 for the average worker, over 8,500 new startups, and 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year.
As Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Heidi Shierholz explained, "Noncompete agreements are employment provisions that ban workers at one company from working for, or starting, a competing business within a certain period of time after leaving a job."
"These agreements are ubiquitous," she noted, applauding the ban. "EPI research finds that more than 1 out of every 4 private-sector workers—including low-wage workers—are required to enter noncompete agreements as a condition of employment."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has suggested it plans to file a lawsuit that, as The American Prospectdetailed, "could more broadly threaten the rulemaking authority the FTC cited when proposing to ban noncompetes."
Already, the tax services and software provider Ryan has filed a legal challenge in federal court in Texas, arguing that the FTC is unconstitutionally structured.
Still, the Democratic commissioners' vote was still heralded as a "seismic win for workers." Echoing Khan's critiques of such noncompetes, Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert declared that such clauses "inflict devastating harms on tens of millions of workers across the economy."
"The pervasive use of noncompete clauses limits worker mobility, drives down wages, keeps Americans from pursuing entrepreneurial dreams and creating new businesses, causes more concentrated markets, and keeps workers stuck in unsafe or hostile workplaces," she said. "Noncompete clauses are both an unfair method of competition and aggressively harmful to regular people. The FTC was right to tackle this issue and to finalize this strong rule."
Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, praised the FTC for "listening to the comments of thousands of entrepreneurs and workers of all income levels across industries" and finalizing a rule that "is a clear-cut win."
Demand Progress' Emily Peterson-Cassin similarly commended the commission "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
While such agreements are common across various industries, Teófilo Reyes, chief of staff at the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said that "many restaurant workers have been stuck at their job, earning as low as $2.13 per hour, because of the noncompete clause that they agreed to have in their contract."
"They didn't know that it would affect their wages and livelihood," Reyes stressed. "Most workers cannot negotiate their way out of a noncompete clause because noncompetes are buried in the fine print of employment contracts. A full third of noncompete clauses are presented after a worker has accepted a job."
Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) executive director Mike Pierce pointed out that the FTC on Tuesday "recognized the harmful role debt plays in the workplace, including the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, and took action to outlaw TRAPs and all other employer-driven debt that serve the same functions as noncompete agreements."
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at Open Markets Institute, highlighted that the addition came after his group, SBPC, and others submitted comments on the "significant gap" in the commission's initial January 2023 proposal, and also welcomed that "the final rule prohibits both conventional noncompete clauses and newfangled versions like TRAPs."
Jonathan Harris, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and SBPC senior fellow, said that "by also banning functional noncompetes, the rule stays one step ahead of employers who use 'stay-or-pay' contracts as workarounds to existing restrictions on traditional noncompetes. The FTC has decided to try to avoid a game of whack-a-mole with employers and their creative attorneys, which worker advocates will applaud."
Among those applauding was Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, who said that "the new FTC rule will limit the ability of employers to use debt to lock nurses into unsafe jobs and will protect their role as patient advocates."
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, also cheered the effort to stop corporations from holding employees "hostage," saying that "this rule is a critical step for protecting our nation's workers and making labor markets fairer and more competitive."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Discriminatory' North Carolina Law Criminalizing Felon Voting Struck Down
One plaintiffs' attorney said the ruling "makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society."
Apr 23, 2024
Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
Therefore, according to the judge, the 1877 law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
"We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time," Action NC executive director Pat McCoy said in a statement. "We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes. Democracy truly won today!"
Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
However, Mitchell Brown, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said that "Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to reengage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
However, last April the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel decision, stripping voting rights from thousands of North Carolinians previously convicted of felonies. Dissenting Justice Anita Earls opined that "the majority's decision in this case will one day be repudiated on two grounds."
"First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own," she wrote.
As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow all incarcerated people to vote behind bars.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular