Maria Cantwell: “we must act on many fronts to wage a successful fight against terrorism. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 will provide our…”

“we must act on many fronts to wage a successful fight against terrorism. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 will provide our law enforcement agencies with significant new tools to fight this battle on the home front. There are many good things in this bill. I am especially pleased that the bill includes language to allow the tripling of manpower on our northern border. The bill also includes a provision to set a new technology standard for our visa program so we can better identify people coming into this country. I am very proud of the many tools in the bill for law enforcement. This legislation increases the number of FISA judges to speed law enforcement's ability to get taps in place and going and contains excellent new provisions to help law enforcement and banks better track and freeze financial assets of terrorists. Further, the bill provides for expedited hiring and training of FBI translators. Finally, the legislation takes steps to allow better sharing of information between the law enforcement and intelligence communities, although I believe this sharing and coordination would be better accomplished with a process for judicial review. But I have my concerns, as well, with the scope and the pace of these sweeping changes. We may have gone further than we really need to go to address terrorism.”