ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 14, Number 115 
Date: November 18, 2005

In This Issue: PATRIOT Act -- Good News! Keep the Pressure On

Good News-- Because of the pressure from constituents, the PATRIOT reauthorization vote will NOT take place before Thanksgiving. It's up to us to make sure that we prevail on library issues by continuing to contact Congress (again and again) to tell them to support the Senate version of the bill.    

Every time you see your Member of Congress between now and mid-December bring up the following talking points (You can never bring up these points too many times): 

1. Support efforts to change the language of the Patriot Act conference report to reflect these concerns:  
 
2. The current draft has 7-year sunsets-- We want a 4-year sunset that will make it possible to correct an abuse of Section 215 at an earlier date. 
 
3. The current draft requires that the FBI need only assert facts "relevant" to a general terrorist investigation to get an order from a secret FISA court for records.  This is a lower and less protective standard than the Senate version of the bill that required the FBI to demonstrate a connection between the records sought and a terrorist organization or a suspected terrorist. We want the Senate language. 
 
4. The current draft does not provide a meaningful ability to challenge an NSL or order of the FISA court.  
 
5.  The current draft does not provide meaningful safeguards for patron privacy. The Senate language is more protective. 
 
6. Tell the PATRIOT conferees that you want the conference report to reflect the points above. 
 
7. Thank you for supporting the civil liberties of library patrons.

Please forward this email to EVERYONE-- Get as many people as you can to be saying the same thing during this window of opportunity. Call your legislator's local office and make an appointment to see them during this recess.  If we hear that they will be having a public meeting in your district we will alert you to this through your state association.   


House conferees:  
Andrews; Baca; Bean;  Bishop (UT); Cardin; Case; Clyburn; Cubin;
Duncan; Ehlers Emanuel; Frank; Pelosi; Delahunt; Ford; Garrett; Harris; Harman; Higgins; Hoekstra;  Hoyer; Holt; Issa; Johnson (IL); Jones;  Kingston; LaHood; Lantos; Leach Lewis (CA); Lipinski; Mack, Manzullo, Meehan; Menendez; Musgrave; Ney; Pallone; Price (GA); Poe; Pomeroy; Rehberg; Rohrabacher,  Ruppersberger; Schakowsky;  Schiff; Sherman; Smith (WA); Smith (NJ); Strickland; Schwartz(PA);Spratt; Tauscher; Weiner; Whitfield; Westmoreland;Young (AK); 
 
Senate conferees: 
Bingaman; Boxer; Brownback; Byrd; Cantwell; Chafee; Coburn; Conrad; Corzine; Clinton; Dorgan; Gregg; Harkin;Jeffords; Johnson; Lautenberg; Nelson (FL); Obama; Harry Reid; Jack Reid; Salazar; Snowe; Voinovich; Wyden 

Contact your members of Congress using ALA's online Legislative Action Center <http://capwiz.com/ala/home/>

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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Don Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Erin Haggerty, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.