Ron Wyden: “I intend to be very brief. Tonight the Senate is passing the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act by unanimous consent. It is…”

“I intend to be very brief. Tonight the Senate is passing the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act by unanimous consent. It is certainly not often that such a procedure would be used for a statute of such extraordinary importance. I believe that it is possible to fight terrorism ferociously without sacrificing civil liberties. Tonight I remain concerned that there will be an effort in the conference between the House and the Senate to authorize what are known as administrative subpoenas for the FBI under the law. These administrative subpoenas are warrants that FBI field offices can write themselves without having to make an application to a judge. Under an administrative subpoena, an FBI field office could get records secretly for just about anything from just about anybody. Here is an example of how intrusive these administrative subpoenas could be. There are 56 field offices, one in almost every major city. The head of a field office could issue an administrative subpoena to a hospital director and ask for all of the hospital's medical records simply by claiming they were relevant to an investigation, the hospital director was busy or didn't have the resources to make a challenge. No judge would ever see the subpoena. The patients would not know their records had been seized. They would be totally in the dark. Your mother's, your husband's, your own medical records could move into the Government's hands, and you would be none the wiser.…”