PORTLAND - An Oregon lawyer who won a ruling that provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional has urged Congress to resist Bush administration efforts to overhaul a law requiring oversight of government surveillance.

Brandon Mayfield challenged the Patriot Act over secret surveillance and searches of his home and office after the FBI misidentified a fingerprint in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

The FBI publicly apologized to Mayfield for the mistake and settled a lawsuit for $2 million.

In September, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled on his challenge to the searches, issuing a sharply worded rebuke to the administration that warned the Patriot Act allows the government to sidestep Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The White House since has been pushing for a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which requires court oversight of surveillance.

On Thursday, the House approved a bill to strengthen that oversight, drawing an immediate veto threat from President Bush.

The Democratic bill also stopped short of providing legal immunity to telecommunication companies that help the government eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail.

Mayfield wrote a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., urging them to protect FISA from amendments that could weaken it.

“The Patriot Act weakened the requirements the government needed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to bug my home and office,” Mayfield wrote.

“When legislation is written that waters down the standard of the Fourth Amendment, it is not the guilty who suffer, but the innocent,” he said.

The letter was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Mr. Mayfield’s case is a cautionary tale,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU legislative office in Washington, D.C.

“Mr. Mayfield’s experience has taught us that expanding government powers without checks and balances can actually affect and ruin people’s lives.”

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On the Net:

Mayfield letter: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32770leg20071101.html