From the Bill of Rights to the Patriot Act

 Now is the time to Stand Up for the Constitution

by Louise Legun 

     December 15th is the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. On this day every citizen should recall why these laws were created and must take steps to ensure that any efforts to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of fundamental civil liberties of the people. Today evidence of Bill of Rights abuses has been both flagrant and prolific. In the past six years, we’ve learned of illegal National Security Letters (NSLs), warrantless wiretapping, public information crackdowns, indefinite detentions, secret prisons, confessions coerced by torture and much more. 

     In a scathing report issued in March 2007 the Department of Justice Inspector General learned that between 2003 and 2006 the FBI issued more than 143,000 NSL requests to public libraries, phone companies, financial institutions, and many other organizations demanding they hand over information on ordinary people. NSL recipients are forbidden from discussing the letters. Meanwhile the FBI has shared this traditionally nonpublic information with businesses and other government agencies. An internal audit reported more than 1,000 abuses of the FBI’s NSL powers expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT ACT is an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” 

     In December 2005, President Bush said that his wartime powers gave him the right to ignore warrant laws. He had secretly been authorizing the military to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails. On March 9, 2006 President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act. After the ceremony, Bush issued a ‘signing statement,’ in which he said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used. 

     In March 2004 Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield was accused by the FBI of participating in the Madrid train bombing. His home had been bugged and his law office broken into without a search warrant and without probable cause. Mayfield was arrested and held incommunicado for two months because the FBI refused to believe that his fingerprints did not match those found at the scene by the Spanish National Police. After being found completely innocent he was released in May 2004 and was awarded a two million dollar settlement by the government. Then, Mr. Mayfield did something that the government did not anticipate. He hired his own attorney to help ensure that other innocent citizens are not similarly deprived of their constitutional rights. And on September 26, 2007, Federal Judge Ann Aiken ruled that two provisions of the PATRIOT Act are indeed unconstitutional -- specifically, Section 213, the ‘sneak and peek’ provision and section 218 amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which were used to search and wiretap Mayfield’s home and office. Judge Aiken wrote in her decision, “The Fourth Amendment has served this nation well for 220 years, through many other perils. In place of the Fourth Amendment, the people are expected to defer to the executive branch and its representation that it will authorize such surveillance only when appropriate.” She continued, by saying the government “is asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. The court declines to do so.” 

     On October 26 2007 on the sixth anniversary of the passage of the U.S. Patriot Act, former A.G. John Ashcroft spoke at DeSales University. He defended the Patriot Act by saying that, “We have to embrace this responsibility of prevention, but we must do it with respect for liberty. Security serves liberty.” Yet, in implementing the PATRIOT Act just the opposite has occurred, with liberty being sacrificed in the name of security. Some 412 communities have passed resolutions restricting provisions of the Patriot Act and from gaining access to private information via National Security Letters without oversight from local governments. 

     As a resident of Allentown, I am inviting all local citizens who wish to safeguard their civil liberties to participate in ‘Stand Up for the Constitution’ on the steps of Allentown’s City Hall on the first Monday of each month at noon. I am also recommending that city, county, and state resolutions be issued restricting provisions of the USA Patriot Act in order to increase grassroots pressure on Congress to restore the rights we, as citizens, were given by our founders. As Albert Einstein said, “The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his/her share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”