Bill of Rights Defense Campaign

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I. What is the Patriot Act?

Passed with almost no discussion (and without many Congress members having read it) on October 26, 2001 (just six weeks after 9/11), the USA Patriot Act, a 324-page long document, gives the Executive Branch sweeping new powers in the name of "combating terrorism." See ACLU handout I've given you for which amendments are threatened and some actions that the Executive Branch has already taken outside of educational settings. The Act is part of a long-established tactic to intimate and silence dissent or perceived threats to national security. Other examples include the Espionage Act of 1917, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the HUAC hearings during the McCarthy era.

In terms of surveillance, the law vastly expands the government's authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balancing powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court. It does this in four areas:

  1. Records searches. It expands the government's ability to look at records on an activity being held by third parties. (Section 215)
  2. Secret searches. It expands the government's ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213).
  3. Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information.(Section 218)
  4. "Trap and trace" searches. It expands another exception to the Fourth Amendment to allow for an agency that collects "addressing" informaton about the origin and destination of communications as opposed to the content. (Section 214)

Effects on privacy issues:

Section 215 allows the FBI to order any person or entity to turn over "any tanglible things," so long as the FBI specifies that the order is "for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." The FBI need not show probable cause. It need not have any suspicion that the subject of the investigation is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power. It can investigate U. S. persons based in part on their exercise of First Amendment rights, and non-U. S. persons solely based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. For example, they could spy on someone because they don't like the books they read, the web sites they visit, or the letter to the editor they wrote criticizing government policy. Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing that fact to anyone else. Those who are subjects of surveillance are never notified that their privacy has been compromised.

Other provisions include:

  1. It gives the CIA the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements.
  2. It creates a new crime, of "domestic terrorism," that facilitates the detention of any protestors. The defiinition includes conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life" and those that "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." Those who provide lodging or assistance to such "terrorists" (for instance, Greenpeace might qualify) are exposed to surveillance or prosecution. Further, it gives the attorney gender and the secretary of state the power to detain or deport any non-citizen who belongs to or gives money to one of these broadly defined "terrorist" groups.
  3. It allows for the indefinite detention of non-citizens. It gives the attorney general unprecedented new powers to determine the fate of immigrants. The attorney general can order detention bsaed on a certification that s/he has "reasonable grounds to believe" that a non-citizen endangers national security.

II. How people are responding:

  • 260 communities in 37 states in the U. S., including three states, have passed resolutions urging curbs on the Patriot Act. Four out of the five largest cities, including Philadelphia, have done so.
  • Librarians have refused to turn over lending records to federal agents, at times erasing those records when books are returned.
  • Recently, the U. S. district judge in Los Angeles threw out a section of the Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations, ruling that the ban was impermissibly vague in its wording.
  • 5 universities (Appalachia State, California State [not sure which campus], Muhlenberg, and University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz) have passed a resolution similar to this one, and the AAUP is in the process of adopting and circulating this one as well.

III. Possible actions and actual examples of the effects of this legislation and climate on educational institutions:

We, as academics, need to be afraid that the extraordinary powers granted in the Patriot Act severely threaten our civil liberties, which permit government agencies to: obtain library records; search student rooms; monitor e-mail without judicial authorization; restrict when and where students, faculty, and staff may rally, protest, or speak about certain issues; sanction students or faculty for written or spoken commentary; institute policies that prohibit research and writing on certain topics in the name of national security.

  • Last month at Drake University, the Justice Department supoenaed records from an anti-war conference, including the names of all attendees. Because of outraged protest, the order was rescinded a week later.
  • Since 1996, the Center for Cross-Cultural Study and Willamette University have jointed sponsored study abroad programs in Cuba, under license of the U. S. government. Last month, the OFAC has abruptly issued an order for CC-CS to immediately "cease and desist" their activities in Cuba, ignoring the situation of the more than 50 students currently studying there.
  • Last year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the FBI recruited a campus security officer for their anti-terrorism task force. He turned in the names of two men for questioning, a faculty member and a campus union organizer, both of Middle Eastern descent. Both were questioned about their political beliefs, although neither was suspected of any crime.
  • HR 3077, the International Studies and Higher Education Act, passed on October 21, 2003, sets up an advisory board that can recommend denying federal funding to colleges and universities deemed to harbor academic critics of Israel.

--Stacey Schlau, Faculty, West Chester University, April 9, 2004

Sources: Anna Adams, Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, and ACLU