Hatch takes heat over Patriot Act
On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Libertarian Party of Utah, the Utah Progressive Network, the Utah League of Women Voters and the Citizens Education Project took out full-page ads in the Deseret Morning News and Salt Lake Tribune, as well as newspapers in Alaska, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., urging readers not to "confuse the Patriot Act with patriotism."
The ad specifically asks Congress not to include any expansions of the controversial Patriot Act in any legislation to implement recommendations of the 9/11 commission.
"Commitment to the Constitution should transcend political ideologies," Dani Eyer, executive director of the ACLU of Utah, said in a press release announcing the ad campaign. "The right and left don't often agree, but when they do it's because of their commitment to preserve freedom and liberty. Senator Hatch must listen to the millions of Americans who demand that we be both safe and free."
But it is one bill, called the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE), a bipartisan measure sponsored by an Idaho Republican and an Illinois Democrat, that has not been scheduled for a Judicial Committee action that has the right and left calling on Hatch to take action.
The bill calls for changing certain Patriot Act provisions that opponents have long said jeopardize constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. The ACLU cites, for example, one section that allows the FBI to obtain Americans' medical, business, library and genetic records without probable cause, and another that allows federal agents to search homes without notifying them for a certain period of time.
But Hatch, who has chaired public hearings on the Patriot Act, remains wary of changing the law, especially if it means shackling terrorism investigators with restrictions not required in other criminal cases.
"It seems to me that we should not make it any harder to go after suspected terrorists than after suspected drug dealers," Hatch said during a committee hearing last week.
He said criminal law has permitted investigators to go to a grand jury to obtain business records that may be relevant to a criminal investigation. But one provision of SAFE would require a higher standard in terrorism cases, he said.
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