madam speaker , i rise today in opposition to the conference report on h.r. 3199 , the usa patriot and terrorism prevention reauthorization act of 2005 . 
last week , republican house and senate negotiators reached an agreement to reauthorize the patriot act . 
as part of the deal agreed to by house and senate republican conferees , federal law enforcement authorities will retain the right to : investigate american citizens without judicial oversight , a power that is invoked more than 30 , 000 times each year ; search individuals ' private property without notifying them ; access citizens ' library records , medical records , school records , and financial records virtually unchecked by the judiciary . 
the house-senate conference committee had an opportunity to revise the patriot act 's expiring provisions to protect the rights and liberties of all americans more effectively . 
regrettably , the opportunity was lost when democratic conferees were excluded from key negotiations . 
the resulting conference report falls short of what the american people have every reason to expect congress to achieve in defending their rights while advancing their security . 
the conference report drops key protections in the senate-passed bill regarding `` national security letters. '' national security letters , nsls , are , in effect , a form of secret administrative subpoena . 
they are issued by federal authorities -- most often fbi agents -- without any court supervision , and recipients are prohibited from telling anyone that they have been served . 
the conference report also fails to protect the records of innocent americans collected by means of these nsls . 
under the conference report , such records may be kept forever in government databases , shared with the intelligence community , and used for data-mining . 
there is no more difficult task i have as a legislator than balancing the nation 's security with our civil liberties , but this task is not a zero sum game . 
by passing a conference report that allows the troubling aspects of the patriot act to continue , we pursue a false sense of national security at the expense of our civil liberties . 
i opposed the patriot act when it first came to us in 2001 and i vote against it today . 
