Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the motion to instruct. This bill makes permanent the most dangerous and intrusive provisions of the PATRIOT Act, 14 of the 16 previously sunsetted provisions. The remaining two sunsetting provisions are renewed for 10 years. Ten years is not a sunset. Ten years is quasi-permanent.

These provisions are particularly worrisome because they expand the powers of the police to pry into the privacy of ordinary Americans, to go into their homes, into their papers, into their Internet records, their telephone records, their medical records, their bank records.

Reinstating the sunset is about accountability. The breadth of these provisions providing for roving wiretaps, for sneak-and-peek searches, for invading library privacy and section 505, expanding the use of national security letters invites abuse.

The administration assures us, the chairman assures us that these provisions have not been abused. But how do we know? It is all secret. We were told repeatedly that section 215 we should not worry about; it is rarely if ever used to demand library records. Now we know why.

The Washington Post revealed last Sunday that the FBI issues more than 30,000 section 505 national security letters a year, many to libraries for ``preliminary investigations and threat assessments'' before deciding whether or not to launch an investigation. These tens of thousands of invasive government demands for sensitive and private information which never even go before a judge have resulted in the collection of probably hundreds of millions of personal facts regarding innocent Americans, innocent American residents, citizens, and businesses. And the Bush administration has decided to file all this personal information in government databases even if no basis is found for a real investigation and they will not even rule out selling this information to private conditions.

Sunsets have been the major check, albeit probably inadequate checks, on abuse of the PATRIOT Act. They mean that at least every 4 years Congress is required to look at the law again, to revisit it, and has the opportunity to ask tough questions on the use or abuse of these powers, and most important, the administration cannot stonewall these questions except for every 4 years.

We should have to look into these burdens on our civil liberties at least one in four years and ask are these powers being abused, should they be fine tuned? Should they be narrowed? Have we made the right balance between security and liberty? What can we do to ensure that our constitutional rights are not violated?

I wish, Madam Speaker, that this motion to instruct were broader than it is, that it kept all the sunsetting provisions from being made permanent. The FBI will still have all the powers it needs. It will simply have to hold itself accountable to Congress and the American people every 4 years about how these powers are used. Why is that so terrible?

I call on all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to begin to safeguard the national security, not adequately, but to begin to safeguard the civil liberties of all Americans by voting for this very, very skimpy motion to instruct.