USA PATRIOT Act extension one step closer
The House voted to make 14 out of 16 USAPA provisions permanent yesterday. The bill — HR 3199 –that they approved also proposed 10 year extensions to our favorite section, Section 215, with an interesting change.
One amendment, passed by a 402-26 vote, requires the FBI director to personally approve any request for library or bookstore records.
August 1st, 2005 at 8:42
[...] Sounds like some promising changes. I’d be interested in learning more about the Senate bill, which seems to restrict government’s investigatory power more than the one passed by the House. (And of course, the fact that there are now two bills means that they will head to a conference committee to resolve any discrepancies between the two; logic would dictate that the final bill sent to the President will be somewhere between the two current versions.) [...]