mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his leadership on this issue . 
over the last several months , the committee on the judiciary has had numerous oversight hearings , as has the house permanent select committee on intelligence , to look at the patriot act and see where we need to improve it and what we need to do to extend the expiring provisions . 
my colleague from southern california said that we should have sunsets on this because once we have peace we should not have these provisions . 
once the war is over . 
once the war is over . 
the war against foreign terrorists and spies will not end , any more than the police 's efforts to combat organized crime or drug kingpins . 
the tools that we have put into the patriot act are identical to the tools that law enforcement have had for a long time in criminal cases , but we did not have those authorities in foreign intelligence and counterterrorism cases . 
there are plenty of myths about the patriot act , and i think we need to put a few of them to rest . 
one of them is the myth that the local sheriff can go into your library and find out what you have been reading . 
they can not . 
under the patriot act , they need a court order in order to get any business records or library records or anything else , under the supervision of a federal judge . 
and it has to be as part of a foreign terrorist investigation or counterintelligence investigation against foreign spies . 
it is directed not against americans but against those who might come to this country to do us harm . 
the most important thing that the patriot act did was to break down the walls between law enforcement and intelligence to be able to share information across that wall in order to protect us before the attack comes . 
the intention of the patriot act is to prevent the next terrorist attack , instead of just letting the fbi gather the criminal evidence to convict somebody after thousands more have died . 
we need to reauthorize this act , and we also collectively as americans need to dispel the myths about the act and make some important strengthening of the act so that in the future it can continue to protect us . 
