WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The Senate late Thursday passed the most sweeping changes to American civil liberties in a generation with hardly any committee or floor debate, leaving one member to complain about the lack of deliberation in the process that will change how the United States investigates and fights terrorism.
The 96 to 1 vote came at the end of a long night for the Senate as it deliberated a package of anti-terror reforms that were developed with the Senate leadership, White House and Justice Department as a consensus legislative package.
Passed unchanged from the consensus package, the legislation gives federal law enforcement authorities expansive new powers to investigate terrorism that would have been considered unthinkable by most lawmakers before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, according to even those who helped draft the measure.
The anti-terrorism legislation gives counter-terrorism investigators several new powers that were in the past reserved for strictly law enforcement purposes, such as the ability to request "roving wiretaps" that follow a suspect from phone to phone and in different locations, instead of forcing investigators to request specific warrants for each phone or location.
President Bush praised its passage and said he hoped to sign the legislation into law soon.
"I commend the Senate for acting quickly and in a bi-partisan way to give law enforcement these essential additional tools to combat terrorism and safe guard America against future terrorist attacks," Bush said. "This important legislation respects our constitution while allowing us to treat terrorist acts the same as serious drug crimes and organized crime, and strengthen our ability to share information to disrupt, weaken and eliminate global terrorist networks."
Other major changes to current law include allowing investigators broad access to computer networks, to conduct online surveillance of suspect's computer activity, and new powers to access and search private medical and financial records with far less oversight by a judge.
Although passage came quickly -- the Senate spent several hours on the bill compared with the two weeks it spent earlier this year on campaign finance reform -- it did so at the expense of political comity, as one particular member delayed the final vote and made several damning statements on the floor.
The rift between Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold and the leadership of both parties began to show Tuesday night, when Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., asked the Senate to quickly consider the consensus language without offering amendments.
Senate rules allow virtually unlimited debate and amendments, unless unanimous agreement can be reached to waive the rules. Feingold objected to the request and later cut a deal with Daschle to bring the bill up with consideration of four amendments.
But on Thursday night a deal to cut out those amendments -- which had little chance of passage -- fell apart, leading Daschle to take to the floor to explain that he would not vote for the amendments, even if he found merit in them.
Daschle explained that the package represented a deal between the leadership and the White House. This deal could not offer anyone exactly what they might normally want, he said, but in the interest of time Senators should agree to the package in the hope that details could be resolved later in conference with the House of Representatives.
This did not sit well with Feingold.
"I want to be clear about what's being asked of the Senate here," he said. "There was not a single moment of markup vote or amendments or a vote in the Judiciary Committee at all. I accepted that because of the crisis our nation faces. This is the first substantive amendment on this entire issue of one of the most important civil liberties bills of our time and the Majority Leader has asked the Senators not to vote on the merits of the issues."
"I understand the difficult task he has, but I must object to the idea that not one single amendment will be voted on the merits on the floor of the Senate," he added, before temporarily leaving the floor of the Senate.
Over the next few hours, the Senate rejected each of Feingold's amendments and the bill was passed just before midnight. Feingold alone voted against the bill.
The Senate bill drafted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking member Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, contains new authority similar to its counterpart passed by the House Judiciary Committee last week by a 36-0 vote.
The House version also lets the government use expedited procedures to tap phones and trace e-mail correspondence, including the power to attach a phone tap order to an individual as opposed to a device, and avoid applying for new orders in separate jurisdictions across the country as a suspect and investigation move. It also allows the government to use rules--originally designed to prevent espionage--to quickly get approval from a special panel to spy on suspected terrorists.
But the bill that passed the House Judiciary Committee also contains a sunset provision--it ends all of that new surveillance power in 2003 unless Congress decides to extend it. Lawmakers in the House worried about handing government investigators so much unchecked power and thought it might be prudent to take another look in two years.
Currently, the Senate version would make similar surveillance powers permanent.
Both the Senate and House bills also allow the government to use immigration law to detain suspects for seven days before filing charges--despite Attorney General John Ashcroft's original request to hold those suspects indefinitely.
The Senate bill, however, does not require the government to review a suspect's case every six months after that time--the House bill does. Critics said without that review, a suspect could conceivably be detained indefinitely if deportation efforts fail because the home country refused to accept the suspect back.
The House will consider final passage of the bill nest week.
