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News > May 27, 2005

Before Sunset

A broad coalition is pushing Congress to rein in the Patriot Act

By Dave Lindorff

An anarchist protests ...

Last October, agents from the FBI and Treasury Department, accompanied by a gaggle of TV news crews, raided the Columbia, Mo., offices of a small charity called the Islamic-American Relief Agency (IARA). Computers and records were seized, and several hundred thousand dollars in donated funds destined for relief work in Kenya were frozen. There were no arrests or charges, though federal agents visited the homes of many of the charity’s local donors. IARA, according to its attorney, Shereef Akeel, was effectively shut down under a little-known provision of the USA PATRIOT Act, which expanded the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to allow the government to freeze the assets of organizations while it investigates for links to terrorism.

“The government has not presented one shred of evidence linking IARA to funding for terror, but by seizing their funds and interviewing their donors, they have effectively destroyed the charity and created a chilling effect in the Muslim community in Columbia,” Akeel says. He suggests the government may have confused IARA, founded two decades ago as the Islamic African Relief Agency (the name changed during the Bosnia conflict when demands for aid moved beyond an African focus), with a Sudan-based charity called the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the government claims has links to terrorists.

The USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, signed into law six weeks after the 9/11 attacks with no congressional debate, faces review in Congress, as 16 of its provisions “sunset” at the end of the year.

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB), an unusual right/left coalition that includes the ACLU, the American Conservative Union and the Free Congress Foundation, is pressing to end some of the act’s particularly egregious civil liberties abuses—specifically, the sneak-and-peek provision, which allows the government to spy on people without notifying them or obtaining a court order, and the library provision, which grants federal authorities the power to inspect library, video, and bookstore user records without a warrant, and which bars librarians and store owners from alerting customers.

ACLU national security lobbyist Lisa Graves says the coalition is optimistic about winning some improvements. “Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) held a ‘critics’ hearing last week,” says Graves, “which the last chair, Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah) would never have done, and in the House, Judiciary Chair James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) has expressed some ‘concerns’ about the act.” The nationwide grassroots movement, which has seen 383 communities, including seven states, pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions, has also put pressure on Congress to amend the law.

“I’m guessing the reforms we want in the act could gain some traction,” says Steve Lilienthal, director of the Center for Privacy and Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative member of the coalition. “It will be an uphill battle, but I think we may win.”

Not everyone, however, is happy with the notion of reforming the law.

“There’s a danger in trying to fix it,” argues Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has not joined the coalition. “I’m afraid by working to fix problems with a few provisions that have gotten attention—the library provision and sneak-and-peek—the focus is taken off of the really serious threats to freedom, both in the Patriot Act and outside it.

“Things like the broadened definition of terror, which can include blocking a highway during a demonstration, or the enhancement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which now allows the government to spy on ordinary criminal suspects without showing probable cause or obtaining a warrant, are horrible,” says Ratner. “Whole Islamic communities in the U.S. now live in terror and fear. It’s much worse than the spying on CISPES [Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador] in the ‘80s.

“Just because 9/11 happened, doesn’t mean you need new laws, ” Ratner says. “The government should have to prove why current laws and powers don’t work. It should have to justify each new power given to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. On some things, you have to stand on principle and not compromise.”

Graves concedes that Ratner may have a point. “The 9/11 Commission had a similar perspective,” she says. “One of their recommendations was that the administration should have the burden of proof for any change in the laws that affect civil liberties.” But Graves says that the coalition’s—and ACLU’s—view is that by joining right and left, they can win at least some improvements, while repealing the PATRIOT Act is not politically possible—at least for now.

Meanwhile, Akeel and the IARA, taking matters in their own hands, have sued in federal court in Washington, D.C., to unblock the charity’s funds. “I’ve been getting letters from little kids in Kenya begging for me to restore the money that was being sent to support them,” says Akeel.

Dave Lindorff, an In These Times contributing editor, is the author of This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy. His work can be found at This Can't Be Happening.

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  • Reader Comments

    I’ve felt many times that something became dislocated in America after 9/11, and the Patriot Act’s swift near-unanimous passage, and the fact that barely anyone has pointedly questioned its provisions or even the need for it has only reinforced my forboding. If the “world changed” that day, as has been repeated to the point of distortion, the worst of all changes inside America was the quickness with which the federal legislators voted a Constitution-damaging statute into law, and the slow and tentative pace with which American citizens have seen the need to confront it. Apparently the concern that freedoms once given up are extremely hard to win back was lost upon everyone after the Towers fell. Maybe that’s understandable, it was really a frightening day, but the entire world and particularly Americans would benefit from our fear-reaction finally petering out, and the hated Patriot Act ideally being repealed. In my true heart, though, I fear that it will only be “improved” so that enough people will feel contented and the movement to get rid of it will become hopelessly “fringe”, such that the quotient of police-state characteristics in the country will have permanently increased. Thank God some communities have seen fit to try and keep it at bay, it’s an example that all communities could benefit from following.

    Posted by Kuya on May 28, 2005 at 3:48 AM

    I read lots here about how awful the Patriot Act is.  There is an example of the charity being investigated that is given in this story, but frankly, I rarely read examples like that.  Most of the outrage seems theoretical to me.

    I mean people huffed and puffed about the library subpoena provision and you would have thought that librarians were being led off to re-education camps.  When Ashcroft testified before Congress about it last year, turns out it had never been used. 

    I would be interested in posters here bringing in specific examples of its misuse.  Are there really lots of them?

    Posted by Campesino on May 28, 2005 at 2:11 PM

    Actully, it has been used. I know this because in a town not far from my own in the great state of Washington, a group of librarians exposed the use of it in their own library and how unjustified it was in the particular case at hand. They, along with the local media and townspeople exposed the request and it was cancelled, quietly.
    But, really, the idea that only when the Patriot Act is used to abuse people is ok to repeal it quite misses the point. This is a bad law.
    Read it. It quite frightening.

    Posted by Kayla on May 28, 2005 at 6:49 PM

    Ashcroft said it.  So, it must be true. Blahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

    Posted by Lefty on May 28, 2005 at 8:24 PM

    It’s our freedom they hate.  They, apparently being Ashcroft, Cheney, Bush and their ilk.

    Posted by Matt H. on May 28, 2005 at 9:59 PM

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