Who's Afraid of the Patriot Act?

Scattered communities take largely symbolic stands against surveillance powers.

Elsa Wenzel, Medill News Service

WASHINGTON-- The ruby neon sign of Kramerbooks & Afterwords cafe buzzes all night long on weekends, but the Washington, D.C., hot spot slams its doors when investigators come knocking for customers' records.

The business gained a permanent write-up in Washington, D.C.'s tourist guidebooks after it refused to turn over Monica Lewinsky's reading list to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in 1998.

Opposition to government access to bookstore and library records is likewise spreading in city councils across the country. More than 100 communities are thumbing their noses at the Patriot Act--which they fear unleashes Big Brother into the realm of personal privacy--by passing resolutions against it.

Most of these elected officials dodge the question of whether they would go to jail or pay a fine to avoid complying with a Patriot Act request. Most doubt it would come to that; several say their resolution is a symbolic gesture intended to send a message to Washington.

Two Tales

Still, local resistance to the Patriot Act, legislation approved by Congress in 2001 after the September 11 terrorist attacks, appears to be growing. More than a quarter of the 114 community resolutions have been passed since March, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

"This is like a snowball rolling down a very steep and snowy slope," says Damon Moglan, ACLU national field coordinator.

Bookstores that keep detailed databases of customers' reading material wield a double-edged sword. The shop may be able to offer greater service, but the practice leaves customers vulnerable to privacy violations, says Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The brave new world where people rely on databases and the Web for everything from resumes to diary entries might label a curious reader of The Anarchist Cookbook as a potential terrorist, Finan says.

Resolutions against the Patriot Act are "a propaganda campaign" by groups like the ACLU, counters Justice Department spokesperson Jorge Martinez.

"Everything they're jumping up and down about is completely ridiculous and untrue," he says. "We're not going after the average American. We're only going after the bad guys. If you're not a terrorist you have nothing to worry about."

More than 11 million people live in communities that have passed anti-Patriot Act resolutions. However, the majority of Americans support the law and the government's terrorist-hunting efforts, says Martinez.

Also, national law trumps the local regulation, agree both Moglan and Martinez. A city that refuses to comply with a federal criminal investigation because of its council's resolution would likely lose in court if challenged.

Patriot Actions

The Patriot Act is designed to preserve First Amendment rights and cannot be used "to investigate garden-variety crimes," Martinez says. It doesn't affect Americans because only a closed-door Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can authorize surveillance in a narrow range of criminal suspects, Martinez says.

The courts have upheld the secrecy about how the Patriot Act is used. A U.S. District Court ruled on May 20 that the Department of Justice could keep its statistics about Patriot Act surveillance classified. The ACLU sued the Justice Department last fall, asking how many times the DOJ or FBI had ordered libraries, bookstores, or newspapers to produce records under authority of the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act does not explicitly mention federal access to library records, but it enables law enforcement officials to obtain business records when investigating terrorism. Grand juries in the pre-Patriot Act era had authorized law enforcement agents to pore through library records in criminal investigations.

Subpoenas of library records helped to identify the Unabomber, New York's Zodiac killer, and the murderer of Gianni Versace, Martinez says.

"A 'what if' scenario is a doomsday scenario," Martinez says. "We don't deal in a 'what if' scenario, we deal with the real world. And the real world is a global terrorist network that wants to kill innocent people that live in the country."

The secrecy surrounding terrorism investigations is necessary and not part of a government plot against its citizenry, he says.

Ongoing Debate

Meanwhile, across the country, communities continue taking a stand--if only a symbolic one. In California, the Arcata City Council was the first to pass an ordinance against the Patriot Act. Hawaii and Alaska approved statewide resolutions. Other resolutions have passed in communities from Broward County, Florida, to Montpelier, Vermont, and westward to Missoula, Montana, and Berkeley, California.

Some of the community resolutions are symbolic statements that affirm the rights to due process and freedom of speech, according to the ACLU. Other resolutions have teeth, because they instruct local agencies to decline to participate in Patriot Act investigations, Moglan says.

For example, under the tough resolution Detroit passed last December, city police can decline requests that are considered "investigatory fishing trips," such as compiling a list of mosque attendees, Moglan says.

The Tucson City Council passed its Patriot Act-related resolution recently by 4-3, with Republicans voting against it. Yet the fact that the dialogue engaged both parties is a positive sign that they are paying attention to the issue, says Tucson City Council member Jose Ibarra.

He is concerned the Patriot Act could force librarians "to play pseudo-spy" on patrons. He does not own a PC, he says, partly because he doesn't want the government "tracking what I'm reading and seeing and who I'm talking to and what I'm reading about."

In a fax to the Tucson City Council the day of the vote, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl urged the town leaders not to join the "minuscule minority" of communities against the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act modernizes law enforcement to keep up with the new technology that terrorists use, Kyl said in his letter.

Patriot Act surveillance powers simply bring law enforcement into the current century, agrees Martinez, the Justice Department official.

"No longer will we have to fight a digital age battle with antique weapons," he says. These tools helped identify the assassins of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Martinez says, and can help the FBI pursue financiers of terrorist networks or individuals who commit terrorist acts.

What's Next?

The Patriot Act is scheduled to expire in two years, although an extension is proposed.

Also drawing the interest of civil liberties groups is the so-called Patriot II, an expansion of the existing act. However, Patriot II is not even in legislative form.

In addition, a bill in the House of Representatives would exempt bookstores and libraries from federal subpoenas allowed under the Patriot Act.

Rep. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, recently introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act (HR 1157). The bill has 96 cosponsors and is now in a House subcommittee.

Meanwhile, Kramerbooks is Patriot Act-proof because its database doesn't link customers' names with the titles of the books they buy, says Kramerbooks general manager Mitchell Brown.

"God help me if they try to subpoena my memory," says Brown.