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Permanent Patriot Act Proposed The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a bill yesterday that would make the controversial USA Patriot Act permanent, but he balked at including some new powers sought by the Bush administration. The bill proposed by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) largely gives the Justice Department what it has requested in the review of the Patriot Act antiterrorism law, which was enacted weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The proposal includes 16 provisions set to expire at the end of this year unless they are renewed or made permanent by Congress. But the proposed legislation does not go as far as legislation approved in June by the Senate intelligence committee, which voted to make it easier for the FBI to open mail and issue subpoenas without a judge's approval in terrorism probes. Sensenbrenner's bill also calls for stronger oversight of some of the government's powers. The fate of both the House and Senate measures is uncertain: Sensenbrenner's bill is likely to come under heavy fire from Democrats during a mark-up session tomorrow, while the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering its own bill as a counterpoint to the Senate intelligence committee's version. The House as a whole voted by a wide margin last month to curtail the FBI's ability under the Patriot Act to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations....
House, Senate chiefs spar on Patriot Act The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees may end up in a showdown on how best to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act. The House chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, is pushing to make the entire law permanent, while the Senate chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, prefers to retain some congressional control by extending only some of the law's expiration dates. President Bush called on Congress again Monday to make permanent the expiring provisions of the nation's premier anti-terrorism law, days after London was struck by terrorist bombs. Sensenbrenner plans to go along with Bush's call on the House side, with his committee on Wednesday working on legislation that would strike all the "sunset" provisions - the predetermined dates when a law or provision expires - from the Patriot Act. Specter, meanwhile, plans to keep several of the sunsets in the Senate bill when its reauthorization is debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting up a conflict between the two versions that would have to reconciled before the provision's expiration on Dec. 31 if they are unchanged in the House and Senate....
Police still using controversial database When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealousness in the fight against terrorism. But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data — from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on. Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania still use software that lets investigators quickly cull through much of the data about people that reside in cyberspace. However, without the federal grant for the Matrix data-sharing system, they won't be routinely searching through digital files from other states — at least for now....
New Jersey Couple Need Not Turn Over Computer to Opposing Party in Lawsuit, Appellate Court Rules A couple ordered to turn over their computer hard drive to public officials they sued does not have to give up their computer after all, a court has ruled. The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey has reversed a trial judge’s May 19 order saying that Scott and Charlene “Charlie” Uhrmann had to relinquish their hard drive so the officials they sued could determine whether the Uhrmanns anonymously posted derogatory statements about the officials on the Internet. After that ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Public Citizen agreed to represent the Uhrmanns in their request for appellate review of the trial court order. The groups noted that the hard drive contains financial and other personal information and said that the order violated free speech and privacy rights as well as established law on rules of discovery and on anonymous Internet postings. In a one-paragraph ruling, the Appellate Division said that the requested information was beyond the scope of discovery, not relevant to the case and could lead to the disclosure of personal information....
Senate Votes to Stop Sweeping Secrecy Laws The Senate voted on Friday, June 24, to better explain when Congress keeps information from the public. The move is intended to push Congress to be clear when keeping secrets from the public and stop secrecy that Congress does not intend. The bill (S. 1181), introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), would require legislation enacted after July 1, 2005, that exempts government-held information from public access to specifically say so. The bill sets the intent of Congress that documents should be available to the public under FOIA unless Congress explicitly creates an exception. Congress can either specifically state that the information is intended to be held secret "in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue" or refer to particulars that should be exempt under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The bill, if passed by the House and signed by the president, could change the current secrecy climate in at least two small but significant ways. First, the bill asks agencies and courts to err on the side of disclosure when a statute is vague about whether certain government-held information should be kept secret or made available to the public. This should help reduce costly court deliberations. Second, it would allow better tracking of the number of laws currently on the books that call for exemptions from public disclosure....

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