The House will vote Thursday, and the Senate either Thursday or Friday, on the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. If you still have representatives in Congress, now is the time to call them and urge them to vote No on this unpatriotic, un-American garbage.

EFF has obtained a draft of the final conference report (in three parts: one, two, and three) (PDF). It is exactly what we feared: the same old PATRIOT Act, with a grab-bag of illusory reforms that will do little to curb abuse of the Act’s most dangerous powers.

Indeed, the bill actually makes some PATRIOT powers worse. For example, even though the Washington Post recently revealed widespread abuse of the “National Security Letter” (NSL) power to secretly demand records of tens of thousands of ordinary Americans, the bill actually strengthens this power by adding new criminal penalties for NSL recipients who speak out about their experience.

The final bill defies the will of Congress, jettisoning reforms that were in the draft bills. Both the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for four-year time limits or “sunsets” on three of the most dangerous powers. The sunset period in the final bill is seven years. This date is so far in the future that it will almost skip the next presidency, and it certainly isn’t soon enough to ensure the Executive branch’s continued accountability to Congress on PATRIOT’s misuse. The bill renews every other power without any expiration, with only a few band-aid reforms. — Electronic Frontier Foundation

“The conference report represents a huge step back for civil liberties. Instead of using the sunset as an opportunity to rein in the many civil liberties abuses documented over the past four years, the Republicans have opted to expand the Patriot Act and to throw in a variety of pet bills and extraneous matters they were not able to pass otherwise,” said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Now call your representative and senators and tell them to vote No on this unpatriotic act.