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• Does Patriot Act Threaten Civil Rights?


Over the last three months, the Massachusetts cities of Cambridge, Northampton and Amherst and the township of Leverett, as well as the town of Carrboro, N.C., all passed resolutions that call the USA Patriot Act a threat to the civil rights of the residents of their communities.
Congress passed the act in October to give federal investigators sweeping new powers to probe terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and soon came under criticism from civil libertarians. The public has been supportive of the measure.

The five municipalities join Berkeley, Calif., and Ann Arbor, Mich., in taking a strong stance challenging the way the Bush administration wants to pursue its war on terror within the borders of the United States.

In Cambridge, where the measure passed the city council by a 5-4 margin on June 17, the resolution says in part, "We believe these civil liberties [freedom of speech, assembly and privacy; equality before the law; due process; and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures] are now threatened by the USA Patriot Act."

"For me, it was that historically there have been attacks on civil liberties in times of war," Councilman Brian Murphy said when asked why he co-authored the resolution. "I think if you look at USA Patriot, this is another example of that."

The resolutions are largely symbolic, because the local governments have no authority to compel federal law enforcement to comply.

"One of the recognitions is that there is a supremacy act and that there are limits to what a city can do," Murphy said. "If the FBI chooses to take actions in Cambridge, they're able to do that under the law as it is constituted.

"We feel it is important that communities send a message that there is opposition to this act," he added.

House Committee Has Questions

Even before USA Patriot was passed, the police in Portland, Ore., broke ranks with the Justice Department's war on terror, saying that it would not cooperate with the FBI on investigations of Middle Eastern students in the city, because state law barred police from questioning immigrants who are not suspected of a crime.

The city council of Boulder, Colo., is considering a resolution similar to the ones passed in the seven other cities, and Denver has also passed a resolution that, while not going as far as the others, still expresses concerns about whether USA Patriot might be implemented in such a way that it could threaten civil liberties.

At the same time, the House Judicial Committee has sent a request to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asking him and FBI Director Robert Mueller to respond to 12 pages of questions — 50 in all — about how the act is being implemented and how effective it has been.

"We plan to schedule a public hearing in the near future to allow further public discussion of these and other issues relating to the Department of Justice's activity in investigating terrorists or potential terrorist attacks," the letter said.

The letter requested a response no later than July 9.

Threat or Protection?

Though the USA Patriot Act was passed by overwhelming margins in both the Senate — 98-1 — and the House of Representatives — 356-66 — the 342-page law has been criticized by civil libertarians and constitutional rights groups as overstepping the bounds of proper law enforcement procedure.

"This law is based on the faulty assumption that safety must come at the expense of civil liberties," Laura W. Murphy, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington National Office, said in that group's analysis of the law. "The USA Patriot Act gives law enforcement agencies nationwide extraordinary new powers unchecked by meaningful judicial review."

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said that he was unaware of the resolutions being passed by cities around the country, but he said their concerns and criticisms of the law were unfounded.

"USA Patriot was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate," Corallo said. "The Patriot Act protects civil liberties and is fully within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution."

The U.S. attorney's office in Boston was also unaware that four cities in the state had approved measures that sought information from federal law enforcement about anti-terror actions being taken in their communities and directed local police not to cooperate with federal agencies if they were asked to do things that violated someone's civil rights.

After reviewing the Cambridge resolution, Jerry Leone, the assistant U.S. attorney in Massachusetts and the anti-terrorism coordinator in the state, said the city leaders do not understand the Patriot Act.