From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Yesterday’s Senate Judiciary mark-up of legislation to renew expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act was extremely disheartening–in particular because of many committee Democrats’ failure to support new civil liberties reforms to PATRIOT (see our summary here). Those Senators who failed to stand foursquare behind Americans’ right to privacy against government spying should be on notice that Americans who care about civil liberties are very disappointed; those that did stand up for our rights deserve our vocal thanks.