Investigative Reporter
With key sections of the U.S. Patriot Act set to expire Dec. 31, the Obama administration
- essentially tiptoeing through the corridors of Congress and using the raucous health care debate as cover -
has quietly maneuvered for renewal of the controversial provisions, which he opposed as a senator.
- essentially tiptoeing through the corridors of Congress and using the raucous health care debate as cover -
has quietly maneuvered for renewal of the controversial provisions, which he opposed as a senator.
How time flies
As an Illinois senator in 2005, Barack Obama opposed the core of these provisions when they were up for renewal then, saying he wanted to safeguard the country from terrorist attack but had concerns about seeking business records and the wiretapping language.
"But soon after the Patriot Act passed, a few years before I ever arrived in the Senate, I began hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning that this law - the very purpose of which was to protect us - was also threatening to violate our rights and freedoms as Americans," Obama said in a Dec. 15, 2005, speech on the Senate floor. "That it didn't just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe, but powers it didn't need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion."
Obama told his colleagues he had been working in a bipartisan way to improve the law.
"That's why as it comes time to reauthorize this law, we've been working in a bipartisan way to do both - to show the American people that we can track down terrorists without trampling on our civil liberties," he said. "To show the American people that the federal government will only issue warrants and execute searches because it needs to, not because it can. What we have been trying to achieve, under the leadership of a bipartisan group of senators, is some accountability in this process - to get answers and see evidence where there is suspicion."
Nonetheless, in conference, the Congress had jettisoned the bill's safeguards, leaving him no choice but to oppose reauthorization, he said.
"This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law," Obama said. "When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary. They simply need sign-off from a local FBI official. That's all."
Obama said the legislation ignored American case law and fundamental principles.
"And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document - through library books they've read and phone calls they've made - this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law," he said. "No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong."
Three years later, however, Obama was singing a different tune, voting to allow warrantless wiretaps of Americans' calls if they were communicating overseas with somebody the government believed was linked to terrorism.
He also supported immunizing the nation's telecommunication companies from lawsuits charging that they had participated in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
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