Washington, D.C. -- Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) today voted against the final passage of the PATRIOT Act. The bill passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 89 to 10. Below are Senator Akaka's remarks for the record:

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the conference report for H.R. 3199, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005. This bill does not protect the cherished civil liberties and freedoms of the American people.

I voted for the PATRIOT Act in 2001. I believed then, as I do now, that we must give our government the tools it needs to fight, detect, and deter terrorist acts. While I had reservations about the PATRIOT Act and the possibility that it would allow the government to infringe upon our privacy rights and civil liberties, I supported the bill since the more controversial provisions were not made permanent. Granting the government this time-limited authority allowed Congress an opportunity to review how these broad new grants of power were being used.

Unfortunately, the Administration has been less than forthcoming in disclosing how the PATRIOT Act has been used. According to the reports we have received, the government has used the PATRIOT Act to:
• investigate and prosecute crimes that are not terrorism offenses,
• investigate individuals without having any cause to believe the person is involved in terrorist activities, and
• coerce Internet Service Providers (ISP) to turn over information about email activity and web surfing while preventing the ISP from disclosing this abuse to the public.

This information is disturbing and may be indicative of other abuses that the Justice Department has not told us about.

Given these abuses, meaningful checks and balances on the government's authority to investigate Americans are essential. Last July the Senate agreed by unanimous consent to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act with substantially stronger protections in place. However, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives objected to the Senate bill and tried to pass a conference report lacking the protections that the Senate insisted upon. Last month, a compromise bill was introduced, S. 2271, the USA PATRIOT Act Additional Reauthorizing Amendments Act of 2006.

I voted for S. 2271 because it is an improvement over the PATRIOT Act. Any improvement is good. However, S. 2271 does not go far enough to correct the flaws in the PATRIOT Act and convince me that the changes made to the underlying bill will preserve our civil liberties. S. 2271 will make explicit the right to counsel and the right to challenge in court an order from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to turn over records sought in an intelligence investigation, called section 215 orders, but it does not correct the underlying standard for issuing these orders. As such, the FBI, after going before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, can demand a wide array of personal information -- including medical, financial, library, and bookstore and gun purchase records -- about an individual without any cause to believe the person is involved in terrorist activities. S. 2271 does provide an express right to challenge the gag order that accompanies a Section 215 order, but only after waiting a year. However, if the government certifies that the disclosure would harm national security, the gag order cannot be lifted.

S. 2271 would also remove the conference report's language requiring recipients of National Security Letters (NSLs) to inform the FBI of the name of any attorney they consult about the demand for financial or Internet records. NSLs can be issued without FISA Court review. Again the bill still does not require that there be any connection between the records sought by the FBI and a suspected foreign terrorist or person in contact with such a target. This is especially troubling since news reports show that 30,000 NSLs are issued by the government per year, a hundred-fold annual increase since the PATRIOT Act relaxed requirements on the FBI's use of the power.

In 2003, the State Legislature in my home state of Hawaii passed a resolution reaffirming its commitment to civil liberties and called the entire Hawaii congressional delegation to repeal any sections of the PATRIOT Act that limit or violate fundamental rights and liberties protected by the Constitution of the United States. In good conscience I cannot vote to support the PATRIOT Act because I believe that it allows the government to infringe upon the rights and protections we hold most dear.

I do not believe that the PATRIOT Act makes our nation safer. It makes our country weaker by eroding the very freedoms that define us. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither." I am afraid that by passing this legislation today we will in fact have neither a more secure nation nor the freedoms for which we are fighting.