Several provisions of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law Congress passed after September 11, expire this year.

Several provisions of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law Congress passed after September 11, expire this year. The bill's critics on the left and the right want to use the moment to win some modifications to the law. But their suggested changes would be either harmful or unnecessary. They object to a section of the law that allows federal judges to order that records be provided to law enforcement when those records are sought for the purpose of fighting international terrorism. While the act does not specifically mention library records, it does not exempt them, either, so critics have latched on to the idea that the FBI is going to be poring over John Q. Public's reading list. But grand juries could subpoena library records long before Patriot, and without the judicial and congressional oversight that Patriot provides. The law also specifically requires that no investigation can proceed "solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution." The critics object that the act forbids recipients of an order to disclose that they got it. But secrecy here is unavoidable: Terrorism investigators cannot do their jobs while constantly tipping off the suspects. The New York Times warns that the government will "seize an entire database--all the medical records of a hospital, all of the files of an immigration group--when it is investigating a single person." But orders for records can be reviewed, and the standard for review includes that the order be reasonable in scope. The other major target of the Patriot critics is its provision for "sneak and peek" searches, which are searches where a judge has okayed a law-enforcement request that the target not be immediately notified of the search. Patriot lets judges give that okay under certain circumstances, but the critics want to limit those circumstances. Under their proposal, investigators could not conduct delayed-notification searches even when they thought, and judges agreed, that immediate notification would "seriously jeopardize" the investigation. This is unreasonable. The ACLU says that the Bush administration, in supporting these "freedom-stealing provisions," is "telling those of us who believe in privacy, due process, and the right to dissent that it's time to surrender our freedom." Similar rhetoric can be found from conservative critics of Patriot--to their shame. The anti-Patriot coalition often congratulates itself on its broadness, but it appears to stretch only from left-wing hysterics to right-wing hysterics.