Calls for repeal of Patriot Act in college speech
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Democrat Rep. Rush Holt spoke out Tuesday against the surveillance methods and information gathering that federal authorities have used since Sept. 11, 2001, concerns that the retiring lawmaker has raised often in the past decade.
Mr. Holt, speaking a week after the 13th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, told a Princeton University audience that the government did not wait “for legal findings justifying all the steps they took to collect more intelligence.”
Mr. Holt, formerly a member of House Intelligence Committee, voted for the original Patriot Act as did most members of Congress in both parties. Today, he supports repealing a law that he said expanded the FBI’s ability to conduct “clandestine” searches without getting a judge’s warrant. He said the measure “removed many of the legal and practical distinctions between criminal investigations and collection of foreign intelligence.”
He said the Sept. 11 attacks were “widely seen” as a failure on U.S. intelligence collection, something that later was found not to be the case.
“In retrospect, it’s hard to see how faster and more collection of information would have foiled the 2001 attacks,” he told a receptive audience in McCosh Hall. “Most of what the government undertook in response to those attacks was not understood or even known by the public.”
Giving a historical perspective, he looked back to how the British government conducted warrant-less searches in colonial times. He said there was growing public discontent in the colonies about measures, known as writs of assistance. Fast forwarding to the 20th century, he noted how former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover kept files “on many Americans outside criminal cases.”
Later, Mr. Holt traced the recent history of how the federal government stepped up its electronic surveillance after 9/11. He said former President George W. Bush had authorized the terrorist surveillance program to collect international communications, including those from American citizens. He said the program allowed people to be placed under surveillance, without demonstrating probable cause “to place them under suspicion of engaging in illegal activity.”
“It presumed there is a group of people — not yet identified — who are guilty of terrorist activity and, through surveillance, they could be identified,” Mr. Holt said. “No person in America should be placed under suspicion, even provisionally, without probable cause. To do so destroys the founding presumption of equality.”
Mr. Holt said most members of Congress were ignorant of the full extent of government surveillance activities and the ones that did know are bound by an oath to not disclose what they know. He said the leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed what the federal government had been up to. Earlier this year, Mr. Holt said the government should prosecute Mr. Snowden with “leniency.”
Mr. Holt, 65, is retiring from Congress at the end of his eighth term. In 2013, he was defeated by Cory Booker in a primary bid for U.S. Senate to replace the late Sen. Frank G. Lautenberg. Mr. Booker was elected to the senate and is running again this year to retain the seat.