ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 14, Number 121 Date: December 8, 2005 In This Issue: Vote NO on the PATRIOT cloture vote and conference report House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on Thursday, December 08, 2005, to extend the USA PATRIOT Act. The agreement would extend for four years - until 2009-- Sec. 215 of the PATRIOT Act's -- permitting secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries. No changes were made to the standards for obtaining these orders, nor for those for obtaining National Security Letters. Section 505 of the PATRIOT Act, authorizing NSLs, still has no sunset. Please let your Senators know that you are deeply disappointed that the conference committee made so few changes to the House conference report. We appreciate that the conference report would now sunset Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act in 4 years (instead of 7 years, as in the language circulated before Thanksgiving) but this change is not sufficient to protect the privacy of library users from fishing expeditions by the FBI. Six senators (3 Republican, 3 Democratic) are committed to filibustering the House conference report when it comes to the Senate. A cloture vote will be called to force the end of the filibuster. Ask your Senators to vote NO on the cloture vote and NO on the House conference report when it comes to the Senate floor. Senators Durbin, Feingold, Craig, Sununu, and Salazar said today: "We still can - and must - make sure that our laws give law enforcement agents the tools they need while providing safeguards to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans." We agree and they need your assistance to prevail. To contact your Members of Congress visit ALA's online Legislative Action Center located at< http://capwiz.com/ala/home/ > ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to or go to . To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at . ALA Washington Office,1651 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., First Floor, Washington, D.C. 20009-2520; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; Web site: . Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Don Essex,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.