Exclusive: Former Amnesty International USA Board Chairman on Patriot Act Reauthorization

by Chip Pitts
Board President, Bill of Rights Defense Committee
www.bordc.org
Immediate Past Chair, Amnesty International USA
12/14/05

With the House of Representative's cowardly vote today to accept the Conference Report reauthorizing the Patriot Act, hope now rests with the Senate.

A courageous bipartisan group of Senators including Senators Russ Feingold,
Dick Durbin, Larry Craig, Chuck Hagel, John Sununu, John Kerry, Barak Obama, Ken Salazar and Lisa Murkowski, have stood up for the protections contained in the Senate version of the reauthorization bill. While not perfect, that version would at least require that there be some factual connection to a terrorist or spy alleged before the government exercises its extraordinary new search and seizure powers. They have threatened a filibuster, in response to which Republican Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist is negotiating with the White House to see if the Patriot Act can be extended e.g. up to another year while the provisions are reviewed in more detail.

While the Bush administration and its supporters on the Patriot Act claim there have been "no abuses" of the Patriot Act, the Muslim community of course knows this is untrue. The mere existence of the Patriot Act powers is an abuse, because such broad powers chill importance civil and human rights (like free expression and the privacy needed to gather information and ask reasonable questions of government to protect against abuses and vulnerabilities). The secrecy mandated by the Patriot Act's gag orders makes it virtually impossible to know of and report on abuses.

Nevertheless, many abuses have come to light. Can it be mere coincidence that the cases - such as those involving Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield, Idaho student Sami al-Hussayn, moderate Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, and the seizure of assets of the major Muslim charities in the United States -largely involve Muslims? The other main uses of the Patriot Act have been against peaceful dissidents and civil liberties activists, and for ordinary
crimes (and not against terrorists).

Furthermore, it is important to realize that most of the Patriot Act provisions - such as the broad definition of terrorism that chills peaceful dissent and civil disobedience, and the Attorney General's power to detain foreigners essentially indefinitely - were not subject to sunsets and therefore were not debated in any depth at all.

Those provisions of the law that have received some attention - the so-called "library" provision(section 215), the sneak-and-peek home search provision (section 213), and the National Security Letters provision (section 505) - are still fatally overbroad in the Conference Report version, and tilted toward the executive branch, raising serious constitutional and human rights issues.

House Judiciary Chairman Sensenbrenner, Senator Jeff Sessions, and others are using absurd scare tactics to claim that Patriot Act critics want to rebuild the so-called "wall" between criminal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This is highly misleading, both because the alleged wall was much more one of bureaucratic and cultural barriers as opposed to legal barriers, and because no one opposes information sharing - just an absence of reasonable and constitutional checks and balances! The 9/11 Commission just recently gave the government a "D" in the information sharing area, because those cultural and bureaucratic barriers still exist.

It is these human flaws, and not the absence of governmental powers, that has been identified by the 9/11 Commission as the principal reason that our government failed to prevent the terrorist attacks on that date.

Instead of carefully tailored measures that make us safer and protect against actual terrorists, the Bush administration is insisting on overbroad, discriminatory, and counterproductive provisions that violate civil and human rights, alienate the communities on whom we depend for effective intelligence, distract law enforcement attention and resources from the true terrorists, and damage our most cherished values.

Please take this crucial opportunity to preserve and defend your constitutional rights by (i) letting your Senators know (look up their phone numbers via http://www.senate.gov/) that you want them to SUPPORT the filibuster and at least the reasonable reforms contained in the SENATE version of the Patriot Act reauthorization, and they should vote NO on theConference report, and (ii) getting everyone you know to do the same!

[CAIR Note: As mentioned in our previous post, you can follow the link below for easy step-by-step instructions and talking points:
http://capwiz.com/cair/callalert/index.tt?alertid=8313031]