EPIC - Kavanaugh White House Counsel: PATRIOT Act, "measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach"

George W. Bush Kavanaugh Patriot Act privacy surveillance

Kavanaugh White House Counsel: PATRIOT Act, "measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach"

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee released the first production of records for Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh from his time as associate counsel for George W. Bush. Roughly 5,700 pages of documents were made available to the public. The documents show that Kavanaugh assisted in the effort to pass the Patriot Act and drafted a statement that President Bush incorporated in the bill signing. Kavanaugh wrote that the PATRIOT Act will “update laws authorizing government surveillance,” which he claimed, and President Bush then restated, were from an era of “rotary phones.” In fact, the PATRIOT Act weakened numerous U.S. privacy laws, including the subscriber privacy provisions in the Cable Act and the email safeguards in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Both laws were enacted after the era of rotary phones. Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after it was revealed that the White House had authorized warrantless wiretapping of Americans beginning in 2002. In an email exchange, Kavanaugh wrote that the PATRIOT Act was a "measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach . . . .” EPIC recently submitted two urgent Freedom of Information Act requests for Judge Kavanaugh’s records during his time serving as Staff Secretary for President Bush.