ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 10, Number 75 October 12, 2001 In this issue: SENATE AND HOUSE PASS ANTI-TERRORISM LEGISLATION; PROBLEMATIC PRIVACY PROVISION RETAINED SENATE ACTION ON S. 1510 The Senate passed its anti-terrorism legislation, S. 1510, very late on Thursday night, October 11th. The final vote was 96 to 1 with Senator Russ Feingold (D- WI) the only Senator voting against the bill. (Not-voting: Senators Domenici (R-NM), Helms (R-NC) and Thurmond (R-SC). Feingold made four amendments addressing many of the privacy and civil liberties issues of concern to the library community and others. All four of his amendments were tabled and thus never came to a floor vote. But Feingold was not completely alone. For example, twelve Senators supported Feingold's "computer trespassing" or hacking amendment, one of the key amendments supported by ALA and our library association allies, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). In a procedural vote on tabling the amendment, which would have attempted to give more rational protection to access to confidential information such as library and student records, voting with Feingold were Senators Bingaman, Boxer, Collins, Corzine, Dayton, Harkin, Levin, Stabenow, Wellstone, Cantwell, Specter, and Durbin. THANK YOU to all library supporters who called their U.S. Senators. We believe that your calls were a contributing factor in getting Feingold some colleagues to stand with him. Those senators who spoke in favor of Feingold's proposals often referenced the library records issue as well as the concerns of higher education. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) even mentioned that her state librarian had contacted her about the problems in the bill. HOUSE ACTION: Can't tell the players or the bill without a scorecard…. As of 4:30pm today, October 12th, the House of Representatives passed a new version of H.R. 2975. The "new" H.R. 2975 is the text of H.R. 3108. According to statements made on the House floor shortly after the Senate bill, S. 1510, was passed very late Thursday night, there was a deal made to have the text of S. 1510 introduced very early this morning as H.R. 3801. Then the text of H.R. 3108 was substituted for H.R. 2975, the PATRIOT Act. (The original H.R. 2975 had been passed unanimously by the House Judiciary Committee about a week ago.) Falling generally across party lines, many House members (especially those from the House Judiciary Committee), were vocal in their complaints during House debate. They were concerned about the content and meaning of the text of H.R. 3108 as well as the overnight procedural steps to avoid a House/Senate conference on the bills. There are many differences between the Senate bill and the original House Judiciary Committee version. ALA will now review the final House bill just passed and compare it to the Senate legislation. It appears that there are still enough differences to require a conference between the House and Senate on their respective versions. These anti-terrorist bills are extremely complex. It has been difficult to follow the rumored changes as Senate and House negotiators worked with the Justice Department on the many of the troubling provisions over the last 2-3 weeks. The "library coalition," including ALA, AALL, and ARL, sent a list of their broad concerns and followed developments of behind-the-scene negotiations. (See ALA web pages at http://www.ala.org/washoff/terrorism.pdf for the key issues of concern.) Once it became apparent that Senator Feingold would be willing to present amendments, the library community focused especially on his amendments on computer trespassing and access to business records as the final days of Senate negotiations concluded. Standby for further analysis. And, again, ALA and our library colleagues, appreciate the many grassroots supporters who contacted their Representatives and Senators on these bills. ****** 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 listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. 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; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.