Bette Keva
Local men lead grassroots effort to repeal the Patriot Act
Tue Jan 13 03:04:53 2004
64.140.158.41


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Local men lead grassroots effort to repeal the Patriot Act

By Bette Keva / bkeva@cnc.com
Thursday, January 8, 2004

Two Marbleheaders are saying something is sweeping across the country, and it's not tainted beef or the flu virus. It's a grassroots movement to repeal parts (actually the entire) USA Patriot Act.

Passed into law by a jittery Congress just 45 days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that shot fear into the citizenry, the anti-terrorism act won't do much to combat terrorism but instead erodes our civil liberties, said Larry Kepko, a space physics scientist who works for Boston University.

He and software engineer Russell Lane have formed the Marblehead Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) and aim to place Marblehead among the 240 U.S. cities and towns, representing 30 million residents, that have passed resolutions saying that the Patriot Act compromises the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be amended.

"History shows that the government will always try to take away your rights. That's the whole reason the Bill of Rights was passed," said Kepko, who points out that those opposed to the act come from the entire political spectrum - Democrats, Republicans, conservatives and progressives, people on the left and right.

The most egregious provision of the law, according to Kepko, is that it permits law enforcement to perform searches with no one present and to delay notification of the search of a citizen's home.

This is referred to as the "sneak and peak" provision, said Kepko. In fact, even Congress is now having second thoughts and has requested that money not be allocated for it.

"It's one of the more clear-cut examples of overstepping privacy," Kepko said.

Another provision allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek records from bookstores and libraries based on minimal evidence of wrongdoing and prohibits librarians and bookstore employees from disclosing the fact that they have been ordered to produce such document.

"The FBI has always had powers like this, but they have had to get a warrant and show probable cause," said Kepko. "The 'probable cause' bar has been lowered. The state and Congress don't get reports, so in effect, the FBI operates in secrecy. It's not that we don't want them to have powers, but we want them to have oversight to guard against abuse."

Asked if any good has come of the act, Kepko said it's a good question and one that was asked of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Congress asked if the act has been used, how often and whether authorities have been able to stop something they couldn't have stopped before enactment of the law.

"Ashcroft didn't have an answer," said Kepko, who believes the Sept. 11 attacks would have occurred anyway. "There is no evidence that law enforcement was hindered in any way by any laws. They already had [the suspects] under surveillance. They knew they were in flight school. They just didn't put it all together."

If groups calling for repeal of the act had formed 5 and 10 years ago, "People would have thought it's a hippie group. But the NRA [National Rifle Association] and Phyllis Schlafly's group [Eagle Forum] are for this too," said Kepko.

Other organizations condemning the act are: the American Conservative Union, Catholic Vote, American Library Association, American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild, Republican Liberty Caucus, according to a two-page letter Kepko and Lane have mailed to local organizations asking for their support.

They even find the definition of "terrorism," as stated in the act, to be troublesome.

"It is defined very broadly as any act of protest where somebody gets killed. It could be a traffic accident. They can charge the protesters with terrorism. We want to get rid of this too," said Kepko.

Other provisions of the act Kepko and Lane want amended are those that:

# permit law enforcement to have broad access to mental health, library, business, financial and educational records;

# give the secretary of state broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and give the attorney general power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation, even if no crime has been committed; and

# impose an unfunded mandate on state and local public universities that must collect information on students who may be of interest to the attorney general.

"We want the town of Marblehead to join the other towns to say as a local government we don't support these parts of the Patriot Act," said Russell Lane. "Our goal is for Congress to either roll back the unconstitutional parts or for Congress to find them unconstitutional. The only way that's going to happen is if ordinary people are aware. If they conclude it's wrong, they must ask their congressmen to do something," said Lane.

Kepko and Lane are reaching out to the library director, the League of Women Voters, local Republicans and Democrats, the local chapter of the NRA and others "hoping that they'll invite us to speak or that they will participate," said Kepko.

Lane and Kepko intend to bring the resolution to the Board of Selectmen in about a month so they can place it on the spring Town Warrant.

"We are calling on the town to support all our civil rights. If the federal government comes and asks you to apply the Patriot Act, we require you to report how often the Patriot Act has been used in the town," said Kepko.

Massachusetts communities that have passed resolutions are: Amherst, Ashfield, Brookline, Eastham, Lincoln, Northampton, Pittsfield, Shutesbury, Wendell, Arlington, Brewster, Cambridge, Leverett, Newton, Orleans, Provincetown and Wellfleet.

The national list may be seen at http://www.bordc.org/OtherLocalEfforts.htm.

The 240 communities that have passed resolutions are loosely united under the umbrella group the National League of Cities. The NLC, a national organization serving as a resource and advocate for 18,000 cities and towns, passed a resolution at its annual meeting stating that efforts to respond to acts of terrorism "should not disproportionately infringe on the essential civil rights and liberties of the people of the United States."

Conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly in a column against the act has written that provisions of the Bush Administration's USA Patriot Act is intrusive.

"Some people seem to think it's acceptable to profile the bank accounts of law-abiding citizens but not acceptable to profile Middle Eastern Muslim aliens who might hijack an airplane," Schlafly wrote. "Americans must not allow the 9/11 terrorists to turn America into a police state. The job of the federal government is to stop suspicious people at the border."
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