Yesterday the House voted on a temporary 60-day extension of the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act, meaning that Congress will have to take up the PATRIOT Act reauthorization again next year.
The House bill being debated right now goes a great deal further in curbing the powers of the PATRIOT Act than the Senate version (Russ Feingold famously derided the Judiciary Committee as "the Prosecutor's Committee") and the extension means that there's a chance that some of the protections put forth in the House bill will make it into the final version. The worry was that Congress might simply be pushed into passing a full extension of all the provisions civil libertarians want altered.
The current scenario is what Mark Dorlester of Get FISA Right was hoping for -- two weeks ago he wrote on Huffington Post that "[t]his time, there's hope the slow pace of Congress works to our advantage."
The statement from Michael Macleod-Ball of the ACLU released yesterday was a bit less sanguine:
It is disappointing that Congress could not make reforming the Patriot Act a priority this year. Upon the House's return next year, we urge them to debate and vote on the USA Patriot Amendments Act, a bill that goes much further in protecting Americans' civil liberties than its counterparts in the Senate. We genuinely hope that Congress will use the next two months wisely for the kind of vigorous debate Americans' privacy deserves.
At least now there's a chance for a real debate on renewing the PATRIOT Act that won't be obscured by the current fight over health care.
-- A. Serwer
