Corporate America mobilized this week to break a four-year silence on the FBI's expanded powers to demand sensitive customer information, but nervousness on the part of several business groups shot down the initiative at the last minute, sources close to the initiative said.

Congress is quickly moving to renew sections of the 2001 Patriot Act scheduled to expire at the end of the year, including one provision allowing the FBI to seize business records without showing probable cause that the subject is connected to criminal activity.

Several bills are now pending, including a Senate bill making it even easier for the FBI to conduct secretive searches and a House bill renewing the Patriot Act without modifications for as long as 10 years.

Realizing that it could be a decade before the powers would come up again for reexamination, business organizations across the nation raced to present a unified position on Capitol Hill this week.

The organizations, representing different industries’ coast-to-coast, drafted a letter that urged Congress to restore checks and balances to the act's search provisions. However, before the letter could be delivered, a number of the business groups backed out, causing the initiative to fall through.

For many businesses, the risks in speaking out against the Patriot Act in favor of customer privacy have been considered too high.

The act imposes a gag order on anyone receiving an FBI demand for records authorized by a secret court that was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

There are other motivations for keeping quiet. Talking in the abstract about secret record searches does not necessarily generate positive publicity; some businesses fear that to challenge the law would make them appear to be "soft on terror," and companies doing business with the government are reluctant at times to challenge their client on policy matters.

Among the few businesses willing to take a stand against the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act without modifications are some health care organizations.

"Unfortunately there's been an assault on medical privacy," said Michael Ostrolenk, who is the director of government affairs for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, based in Tucson, AZ. "The PATRIOT Act continues a long trend of the government obtaining more authority to access records. From out point of view, that’s a dangerous trend."

Ostrolenk said that prior to receiving authorization to demand medical records, the FBI should present the facts connecting the records to terrorism, and that doctors should be allowed to challenge such FBI directives. Ostrolenk also stated that there are other industries sharing the same view, but they are reluctant to say so.

"There are a lot of professional groups that deal directly with the government," he said. "They want something from the government, whereas we don't actually take anything from the government."

Prior to the PATRIOT Act’s inception, the FBI had power to conduct a search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it could show that there was probable cause that the subject of the investigation was a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

The PATRIOT Act amended FISA so that the FBI just has to declare to a secret FISA court that the records it is seeking may be related to an ongoing terrorism investigation or intelligence activities, and it receives automatic authorization.

Bookstores and publishing firms have also been vocal opponents of the unchecked search powers since the PATRIOT Act was passed, motivated by concerns about the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and First Amendment rights to free speech as well.

According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the PATRIOT Act has been used to authorize searches at hotels, apartment buildings and ISPs, but not libraries or bookstores.

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