01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 20, 2005

COMIC MARTY FELDMAN once did a skit in which he portrayed a neurotic life-insurance customer torturing the salesman with a series of far-fetched hypothetical circumstances, to test the extent of the proposed insurance coverage. When told that he would not be covered if he were kidnapped by pirates and locked in a tin box with a porcupine, he stormed out.

So it goes with the debate about the USA Patriot Act, which is the subject of congressional hearings over sections of the law due to expire this year. Much of the public discussion has become preoccupied with imaginary things that are not in the act, creating widespread misconceptions about it.

Criticism of the Patriot Act is virtually all hypothetical. In congressional testimony, Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales said that the Department of Justice had been unable to confirm a single instance in which the act had infringed on anyone's civil liberties. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), a frequent critic of the act, has said that not a single abuse of the act has been reported to her, and that the American Civil Liberties Union could not confirm for her staff any instance of abuse.

Most of the criticism has focused on Sections 213 and 215. Section 213 allows for the use of delayed-notification search warrants. Critics envision hordes of federal agents unleashed by the Patriot Act to secretly tramp through our homes and rummage for evidence. In fact, delayed-notification search warrants have been used in criminal investigations for decades in instances when investigators could demonstrate to a judge that providing immediate notice would threaten someone's safety or the investigation. (One was used in Rhode Island in the 1991 money-laundering investigation of Stephen Saccoccia.) Moreover, this section has been used in less than one-fifth of one percent of all search warrants obtained since the Patriot Act was passed. In every case, the department made a proper showing of cause to a court.

The level of misinformation is even worse regarding Section 215, the so-called library-records provision, and history shows how misguided the criticism is. Since the act was passed, it has never been used to collect library records -- or bookstore records or medical records. Not once. It has been used a total of 35 times, to seek driver's-license records, public-accommodations records, apartment-leasing records, credit-card records and subscriber information.

This power to collect records under Section 215 is actually narrower than the power that criminal investigators have used for generations: the grand-jury subpoena. Unlike a grand-jury subpoena, which does not require court review, a judge must approve a 215 order.

The Patriot Act made a number of important and sensible improvements in the rules that govern intelligence investigations. First, it broke down "The Wall," which had prohibited the sharing of information between criminal investigators and intelligence personnel.

For example, a federal prosecutor told Congress about a criminal investigation of Osama bin Laden in 1996 and described how he had been able to talk to police officers and even to al-Qaida members, but not to the FBI agents across the street, who were involved in an intelligence investigation of bin Laden.

The ability to share information has been critical to the dismantling of several terror cells, including ones in Portland, Ore., and Lackawanna, N.Y. No one has openly advocated rebuilding The Wall, but several of the information-sharing provisions of the act are among those scheduled to expire this year.

The Patriot Act also gave terrorism investigators many of the same tools that criminal investigators had been using for years, such as use of the federal wiretap statute. Importantly, a wiretap may be used only after a federal judge has found probable cause.

The act also permits the use of court-authorized "roving" wiretaps, which apply to a particular suspect, rather than a particular phone number, and reflect the reality that suspects frequently change cell phones, sometimes daily. This is hardly something new, but a tool that has been used for years in fighting drug trafficking and racketeering. Locally, it was used in 1989 in the racketeering investigation of Raymond Patriarca Jr.

Several provisions of the Patriot Act addressed advances in technology and mobility. For example, one provision lets a federal judge issue search warrants for evidence in multiple districts. Previously, investigators had to bring a separate application in each district, which made investigations slower and more expensive.

It's important to separate the hypothetical from the historical. None of us needs to be reminded of what we are up against in the war on terror, and all of us want those in the fight to have the proper tools. The Patriot Act has gone a long way toward reaching that goal, and, remarkably, it has done so with no discernible harm to our civil liberties. It makes no sense to dismantle it now. We have enough real threats to address without worrying about porcupines in tin boxes.

Robert C. Corrente is the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island.