The USA Patriot Act is due to expire at the end of the year, so lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working diligently to draft a new version of the law. While the law should be scrapped altogether, Republican lawmakers are actually preparing to grant new, more sweeping powers to the FBI. Any measure that will further intrude on the privacy of citizens should be duly avoided.
The administrative subpoena, endorsed by the Bush administration and long sought by the FBI, is the new power in question. If Congress obliges, the FBI will be able to seize business and private documents without the approval of a judge. These would include medical, tax, gun-purchase, book-purchase and travel documents. The powers are designed to facilitate terrorism investigations by allowing for the quick retrieval of information relevant to terrorist plots and the activities of foreign agents. What would emerge, however, is a law that simply gives the FBI too much power. As civil liberties groups have justifiably complained, infringements on privacy and free speech would become a virtual inevitability.
The argument in favor of granting the administrative subpoena to the FBI is backed by the fact that other government agencies already have the same power, which is used to investigate crimes such as child pornography, drug dealing and medical malpractice. However, this notion dismisses the fact that these investigations usually end in a public trial. Although the proposed legislation grants affected individuals the right to challenge their subpoenas in court, terrorism probes almost always remain secret. Therefore, a person under investigation would likely never know that the FBI had sought his personal records. Suspects could be arrested or deported without any public action.
The most important consideration to keep in mind when assessing the new draft of the Patriot Act is that the new powers it grants to the FBI are largely unnecessary. As Democrats in Congress have correctly argued, there are no known cases in which the FBI's lack of these powers has hindered investigations. If the situation requiring investigation is as dire as a terrorist plot, the FBI will do what it must to avert disaster anyway. Granting the FBI the administrative subpoena only encourages such invasion in instances when the circumstances are not so extraordinary, or even when no threat is present. Therefore, the new provision should be decried as overarching and unnecessary.
17 Archives
The Post Editorial Board
Proposed subpoena power too broad
