Fergie's Tech Blog

Senate panel votes to expand Patriot Act

Declan McCullagh writes in his Politics Blog on C|Net News:

Forget scaling back the Patriot Act.

Instead, the controversial post-9/11 law would be expanded to give the FBI new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, according to a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee.

The final text of the Senate Intelligence committee's amendments was not immediately available, and reporters were barred from the secret session during which the vote was held.

But the proposal appears to grant the FBI more power to seek information from banks, hospitals, libraries, and so on through "administrative subpoenas" without prior judicial oversight. The subpoenas are only supposed to be used for terrorism or clandestine intelligence cases.

posted by Fergie @ 6/08/2005 08:59:00 AM