USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005

USA PATRIOT AND TERRORISM PREVENTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 -- (Senate - July 29, 2005)

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I intend to be very brief. Tonight the Senate is passing the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act by unanimous consent. It is certainly not often that such a procedure would be used for a statute of such extraordinary importance. I believe that it is possible to fight terrorism ferociously without sacrificing civil liberties. Tonight I remain concerned that there will be an effort in the conference between the House and the Senate to authorize what are known as administrative subpoenas for the FBI under the law. These administrative subpoenas are warrants that FBI field offices can write themselves without having to make an application to a judge.

Under an administrative subpoena, an FBI field office could get records secretly for just about anything from just about anybody. Here is an example of how intrusive these administrative subpoenas could be. There are 56 field offices, one in almost every major city. The head of a field office could issue an administrative subpoena to a hospital director and ask for all of the hospital's medical records simply by claiming they were relevant to an investigation, the hospital director was busy or didn't have the resources to make a challenge. No judge would ever see the subpoena. The patients would not know their records had been seized. They would be totally in the dark. Your mother's, your husband's, your own medical records could move into the Government's hands, and you would be none the wiser.

Despite the very aggressive efforts in the Senate to include this power to conduct these what I believe are fishing expeditions, it is not in the version of the PATRIOT Act that is being passed tonight, since it is not in the House bill either. My view is that under rule XXVIII, it would be outside the scope of the conference to include these administrative subpoenas in any form in the PATRIOT Act. If I am informed later that it is in the conference report in some form, I will make a point of order at that time and the conference report would fall.

Finally, I want to state that I commend our leader, Senator Reid and Senator Leahy, for their handling of this. I know Senator Durbin has been very involved in these issues for years as well. I also want to commend Chairman Specter who has talked with me about the PATRIOT Act on a number of occasions. We can strike a balance. We can ensure that we pull out all the stops to fight the terrorists without throwing our civil liberties into the ash can. If these administrative subpoenas show up in that conference report, that will skew the balance that is so important to make sure we can win the war on terrorism but also to protect the rights that we have brave men and women fighting for.

I yield the floor.

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