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This is the text of an action alert recently sent out by the ACLU. More information and a way to respond can be found at the link.

Acting in the name of stopping terrorism, Members of Congress continue to seek expansion of government power despite widespread concern about privacy and protection against government abuse.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R- WI) has introduced one such bill (H.R. 3179) that would enhance the government's secret power to obtain personal records without judicial review. It would also limit judicial discretion over the use of secret evidence in criminal cases and allow the use of secret intelligence wiretaps in immigration and possibly other civil cases without notice or an opportunity to suppress illegally acquired evidence.

If passed, this bill would be a major and unwarranted expansion of the government's secret surveillance powers under the USA PATRIOT Act.

- This legislation would strictly punish Americans for refusing to obey secret "national security letters" that allow the FBI to get your personal records without going through a judge. The FBI currently has the secret power to obtain - without court oversight and without any need to show evidence that the individual is actually involved in criminal activity - a long and growing list of highly personal records from a wide range of businesses. These can include travel agents, casinos, Internet cafes and credit reporting agencies. This bill provides for criminal penalties for failure to comply with the FBI, or for breaking the strict gag order on the government request. For example, if an Internet cafe owner complained at a local chamber of commerce meeting about a broad FBI national security letter, he could face a prison term under this bill.

- Ties judges' hands in preventing the misuse of secret evidence, which cannot be properly challenged by the accused. Today, when prosecutors worry about compromising national security by introducing classified information as evidence in regular trials, they can apply to the judge for permission to submit a summary of the information. The judge has the discretion to consider the government's request in secret or to hold an open hearing. This new legislation would force judges to consider the government's request in secret even if the judge would prefer to hold an open hearing so the accused can properly respond to the accusations.

- Broadly expands the use of secret intelligence surveillance as evidence in civil cases. Prosecutors can already use intelligence surveillance in regular courts. However, because the surveillance is gathered without criminal probable cause or other safeguards, they have to give the accused a chance to challenge this evidence (which a judge then reviews behind closed doors to see if it was gathered illegally). If this bill passes, we could see the unfair deportation of innocent, long-term legal residents of the United States because they were unable to challenge the misleading and illegal national security surveillance that was secretly used against them.

It seems to me that passage of this legislation would create the closest thing to a Secret Police the US has ever seen.

Secret investigations undertaken without evidence of wrongdoing. A wide variety of personal information available to law enforcement on demand, without even having to go through the formality of getting a warrant from a court. Individuals and agencies being required to actively cooperate with such demands and never being allowed in any way to speak about them, under pain of prison. Courts where evidence cannot be challenged or, in some cases, not even seen by the accused.

The fact that most of that is already part of law shows how far gone we are. Instead of strengthening that process, it should be reversed.

Update: You have got to read this. It's a description of a suit the ACLU has filed challenging the constitutionality of National Security Letters which can be obtained without any "individuated suspicion," that is, without any cause to believe the person so targeted has done anything wrong.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit under seal to avoid penalties for violating the NSL statute's broad gag provision, a provision that the ACLU is challenging on First Amendment grounds. Similar gag provisions are attached to other controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, including Section 215 [which also refers to obtaining personal records], which the ACLU has challenged in another lawsuit.

That is, the case was filed in secret, with the ACLU not even able to reveal its existence, until it could work out a deal with the government about what information about the case could be released. That took three weeks with the government yielding only under legal pressure to allow any information to come out. The result has been the release on April 28 of a heavily-redacted complaint that even blocks out the name of the client on whose behalf the ACLU is suing.

This is getting really frightening.