Council to Consider USA PATRIOT Act By Kathleen McFadden At their May meeting next Thursday night, members of the Boone Town Council will consider a resolution in defense of the Bill of Rights and establishing Boone as a civil liberties safe zone. The resolution, introduced at last month’s meeting by ASU Associate Professor Matt Robinson, takes a stand against some sections of the USA PATRIOT Act that “threaten the fundamental civil rights and liberties” of U.S. citizens and maintains that “there is no inherent conflict between national security and the preservation of liberty.” In his presentation to the council, Robinson explained that while some sections of the USA PATRIOT Act — the acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism — have appropriately strengthened anti-terrorism efforts, others have opened the door to documented civil rights abuses and violations of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The resolution lists those sections by number and the powers they provide: · Permitting law enforcement personnel to perform searches with no one present and to delay notification of the search of a citizen’s home · Permitting the FBI Director to seek records from bookstores and libraries and prohibiting librarians and bookstore employees from disclosing the orders to provide those records. · Amending the “probable cause” requirement for conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime · Permitting law enforcement authorities broad access to mental health, library, business, financial and educational records · Giving the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation, even in absence of a crime · Imposing an unfunded mandate on public universities to collect information on students Robinson supplied examples of close-to-home incarnations of USA PATRIOT Act provisions. An ASU student was warned in a letter from the Department of Homeland Security that he was being monitored because of a book he purchased from Amazon.com. The book — The Turner Diaries — is used in a campus course. Two members of the North Carolina Green Party were separately denied access to airplanes because they were listed as “likely terrorists” and flagged by airport computers. A Durham college student was interrogated after engaging in Constitutionally protected political speech, despite the absence of probable cause of criminal activity. If the Town of Boone passes the resolution, it will not be the first governmental body to do so. Since Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001 — 45 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks — 284 towns and counties and 4 states, Robinson explained, have passed resolutions affirming a commitment to civil rights and liberties. Among them are New York City and Washington, D.C. The National League of Cities has also passed such a resolution. In addition, the North Carolina Library Association passed a resolution in April 2003 to “exempt libraries and booksellers from the most onerous provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and protect Americans’ rights to information without fear,” and the Watauga County Library Board supported the resolution in a letter dated January 2004. Information Robinson supplied to the council notes that within the first year after the Act’s passage, at least 545 libraries in the United States reported requests about patron usage from law enforcement agencies. Both the ASU Faculty Senate and the Student Government Association have passed similar resolutions. The resolution the town council will consider includes four provisions targeted to limiting abuses and working for repeal of sections of the act. The four provisions call for · Local criminal justice agencies to continue to preserve residents’ freedom of speech, religion, assembly and privacy, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the rights to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings · Federal and state law enforcement officials acting within the Town of Boone to work in accordance with these policies and not detain citizens without charges or engage in racial or ethnic profiling · The U.S. Attorney’s Office, FBI and North Carolina state police agencies to regularly and publicly report to the town council their actions under the USA PATRIOT Act, including the names of detainees · State and federal legislators to monitor the implementation of the Act and work for the repeal of the provisions that violate civil rights and liberties In addition, the resolution calls for the town manager to send a copy of the resolution and a letter urging the implementation of anti-terrorism laws in a manner that does not infringe on civil rights and liberties to Governor Easley, appropriate members of the General Assembly, President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress. In addition to appearing before the Boone Town Council, Robinson has given presentations on the USA PATRIOT Act to a number of education-, civic- and business-related groups in Boone and has also pursued several one-on-one and small-group discussions about the Act. Local support, he said, has been overwhelming, with only three people raising concerns and of those, only one registering opposition to the resolution. “A lot of people’s mouths drop open,” Robinson said, when he explains the ramifications of the Act and the documented cases of civil liberties infringements. And he points out that the more than 100 documented cases are likely just a small part of the overall picture. Because of the secrecy surrounding the Act’s implementation, “There are a lot we just don’t know about,” Robinson said.