The Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks was a speedy passage of the now infamous Patriot Act, a bill that gave the federal government the right to obtain library, medical, financial and other records and search the homes of suspected terrorists.

The good news was that it was to expire at the end of 2005. However, a final vote on the renewal of the bill that flies in the face of Fourth Amendment rights is expected to face congress next week.

Even though Congress made several minor changes to the original bill, the Patriot Act will still allow the FBI to snoop into the lives of Americans who are not connected with terrorism.

Section 215 of the bill imposes a “gag order” which prohibits anyone holding library, medical, financial or other private records from saying anything when the government issues a subpoena for those records. The government doesn’t even need probable cause to get these records; it simply has to say the information is relevant to a terrorism investigation.

Recipients of the gag order are required to wait a full year if they wish to appeal.

For the new bill, Congress revised the clause to make libraries exempt from Section 215, but later added that any libraries providing electronic communication services such as e-mail or Internet access are subject to the same requirements as before. According to a 2000 study conducted by professors at Florida State University, 95.7 percent of American libraries have Internet access, making them subject to Section 215.

The American Library Association expressed disappointment in the so-called compromise, saying it offered little improvements on the original Section 215 clause.

“It hardly seems constitutional that there is still no individualized suspicion requirement and that a recipient of a subpoena must wait a full year to challenge a gag order,” ALA president Michael Gorman said.

The revised Patriot Act is really no different from the first: it still infringes on Americans’ constitutional rights. The bill was and still is badly flawed, and passing it would spell a great defeat for American civil liberties.

It is important for Congress to stand up and oppose this bill and not make the same mistake it did in 2001. We believe it is important to combat terrorists, but innocent Americans should not have to give away their rights for privacy.