On Freedom and Security: Consider the USA PATRIOT Act
A talk by Lawrence Snyder
June 6, 2004
The Unitarian Church of Barneveld
I will begin by quoting a letter by James Madison to Thomas Jefferson written May 13, 1798.
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
On October 24, 2001, about six weeks after the horrendous 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, the United States Senate passed the USA PATRIOT Act to enhance our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks. It greatly expanded the powers of the executive branch of the federal government. The rushed passage of this legislation intended to give us security also gave us large losses of our valued freedoms and civil liberties. The legislation was written in a time of fear to fight a “war” on terrorism. We must now consider the fact that the threat from terrorists may last many years and the analogy to war may not be appropriate. We must now think of how our society may be changed if these expanded powers remain in effect for many years. We must now more coolly consider how we can prevent the loss of fundamental values of our society and still provide the security that we all need to live our lives fully.
USA PATRIOT is an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001” consists of 133 pages of provisions that mainly amend previous legislation. It cannot be understood without access to the amended legislation. It was passed in such haste that many legislators did not even read it. The following are noteworthy among the many powers granted to the federal government by the Act:
(a). The power to authorize the indefinite incarceration of non-citizens based on mere suspicion of terrorist activity.
(b). The power to incarcerate citizens designated as “enemy combatants” for and indefinite time and without access to counsel or meaningful recourse to the federal courts.
(c). Limitations on the traditional authority of federal courts to curb law enforcement abuse of electronic surveillance in anti-terrorism investigations and ordinary criminal investigations.
(d). Expansion of the authority of federal agents to conduct so-called “sneak and peak” or “black bag” searches, in which the subject of the search warrant is unaware that his property has been searched.
(e). Grants to law enforcement and intelligence agencies broad access to personal medical, financial, library, and education records with little if any judicial oversight.
The Patriot Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so that many domestic groups that engage in nonviolent civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists.
The Government may now prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they reveal that the government requested information on their clients or members in the course of an investigation.
The Government has conducted immigration hearings behind closed doors. Such proceedings were once open to the public. Hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrants have already been deported in secret.
Consider the following events in terms of the Patriot Act and our administration which is applying it.
An anti-war forum was sponsored on November 12, of 2003 by the National Lawyers Guild at Drake University in Des Moines Iowa. Twenty-one people attended a training session on nonviolent protest at the November 15 antiwar forum.
Subpoenas were issued in the first week of February 2004 ordering antiwar protesters to appear before a grand jury.
The school received a subpoena that demanded a broad range of information about the protesters and the sponsor of the forum. Among items subpoenaed were records on room requests, identity of attendees, and records from campus security that might describe “the content of what was discussed at the meeting”, with a non disclosure order by the court.
On Tuesday February 10, 2004, a far larger group, more than 100, stood outside the federal courthouse in bitter cold, holding a new set of protest signs that said, “Say no to political grand juries” and ”You can subpoena us but you will not silence us” and “Investigate Halliburton not Iowans”. Facing growing public pressure from civil liberties advocates, federal prosecutors dropped the subpoenas that day.
At a private meeting with governors at the White House on February 23, 2004, Education Secretary Rod Paige said that he considered the N. E. A. (National Education Association) to be a terrorist organization. The governors were all a little bit stunned. The secretary later apologized for his poor choice of words. The choice of words was indeed poor because members of a terrorist organization can be detained indefinitely without access to a lawyer.
Our constitution established the three branches of government to assure that limited power will exist in each branch, and that power will be responsive to the needs of a broad range of our citizens. That is referred to as our system of checks and balances. It grew out our experiences being ruled by representatives of a king across the ocean.
It seems clear to me that the USA PATRIOT Act has shifted the balance of power in favor of the executive branch, and whatever constituency it may represent. I fear that we may find ourselves in a situation similar to the military dictatorships that have existed in recent times in Argentina and Chili, where hundreds of citizens have simply disappeared at the hands of the police. That is not the kind of place we would want to live in, nor allow our country to become.
To prevention of abuse of the powers granted by the Patriot Act, it must be modified to give greater congressional and judicial oversight.
A number of unsavory provisions in the Patriot Act could only be passed if they were made to expire with sunset provisions in 2005. It is of high importance that these not be reinstated without careful consideration of their cost in civil liberties and their benefits in security.
The description of our current conflict as a “war” is somewhat inappropriate because we may be the target of terrorism for decades, not for a year or two. This means that how we respond to this situation will influence the future opinions of large numbers of people here and around the world about the qualities of our nation.
The so called “war on terror” is in the long run a battle for the minds of people around the world. My chemistry class of 500 person looks like a reunion of the youth of humanity after a long march of many generations out of Africa. As different as we may appear to be, we have a common origin.
My university and each of us are in the front line in the battle against terrorism and terrorists. We are in a battle for the minds of young people around the world. A battle over whether ideas of freedom of thought and expression, ideals of respect for persons of different culture, ethnicity and gender than ones own, and whether a willingness to have ones thoughts and values informed by the growing body of knowledge, will be adopted by these young people. It is also a battle against fear, ignorance, poverty, and a human tendency to turn inward or to lash out when one resides in a world without hope.
Because we are in a battle for the minds of people around the word, we must not let our highest values of freedom and liberty, and their expression through our constitutional government, be destroyed in the search for security.