NEWS: Opposition to USA Patriot Act swells in Nevada
KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer Friday, November 14, 2003
(11-14) 12:23 PST LAS VEGAS (AP) --
sfgate.com
Rebecca Foster couldn't believe it when a bank cited the USA Patriot Act and asked her and fellow homeowners association board members for their Social Security and driver's license numbers and dates of birth.
"They said they had to check us against a terrorist list," said Foster, a grandmother who heads a five-member board that oversees a Las Vegas community. "That seemed kind of preposterous. None of us are terrorists."
A week earlier, the FBI in Las Vegas acknowledged agents used Patriot Act authorization instead of the grand jury to investigate a striptease club owner and several elected officials.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada calls both uses excessive and warns that Congress in its haste to give the Bush administration tools to fight terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks handed over cherished American rights.
Calls for repeal of the act have found fertile ground Nevada -- an old cowboy state where state vs. federal issues are still fought on riverbeds, at nuclear sites and in the courts.
A broad spectrum including liberals, conservatives, Libertarians, gay and Hispanic activists rallied in three corners of the state this week, calling for Nevada to join Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont and 210 U.S. communities that have passed resolutions urging curbs on the Patriot Act.
"The fact that this issue crosses the political spectrum really lends credibility to the concern," said Janine Hansen of Sparks, president of the conservative Nevada Eagle Forum.
A Justice Department official denied the Patriot Act infringes on Constitutional rights and called the act necessary to fight terrorism.
"It protects the lives and liberties of Americans, rather than detracting from them," said spokeswoman Monica Goodling from Washington, D.C. "It is simply an update of the laws that was needed to help close gaping loopholes in our ability to fight modern-day terror."
Officially called the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, it granted the government broad powers for searches, wiretaps and electronic and computer eavesdropping. Authorities can search people's homes and delay notifying them and track multiple phones with "roving wiretaps."
"The act was intended to be used against terrorists, and we're using it against American citizens without constitutional protections," said Lana Noland of Elko.
A former Libertarian Party chairwoman, Noland has been active in a long-running dispute with the U.S. Forest Service over jurisdiction of a remote gravel road running along the Jarbidge River. On Thursday, she joined one of three Nevada rallies against the Patriot Act.
"Do you really want somebody looking through your financial records so you can serve on a homeowners association board?" she asked. "I don't think so."
Natsu Taylor Saito, a professor of law at Georgia State University in Atlanta and author of a recent Oregon Law Review article about uses of the Patriot Act, said she expects that as elements of the measure touch more people, more people will oppose it.
"What we see in the Patriot Act is an attempt to legalize and make more easily available to intelligence agencies tools that were used illegally and unconstitutionally to fight attempts to bring about social and political change," Saito said.
"I think people are seeing enough instances in which lawful and constitutionally protected activities are being targeted to realize they don't want this unbridled power given to law enforcement agencies," she said.
Peggy Maze Johnson of Las Vegas heads Citizen Alert, a statewide activist organization that added opposition to the Patriot Act to its battle to stop the federal government from building a national nuclear waste dump in the southern Nevada desert.
"We've had to fight the government for 28 years over the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain," Johnson said.
"And I don't want to be in their system any more than I already am," Johnson said.
The Justice Department's Goodling said law enforcers have a responsibility to use laws that Congress provides to fight crime.
"Americans expect us to use every legal tool available to do our jobs in enforcing the law," she said.
But in recent weeks, two members of Nevada's five-person congressional delegation expressed concern that the government might be going too far.
After the FBI acknowledged using the Patriot Act in the political corruption case, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., sent a letter asking Attorney General John Ashcroft for an explanation.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also expressed second-thoughts about approving the measure in late 2001.
"There are concerns that misuse of the Patriot Act could lead to a widespread invasion of privacy," Reid said in a statement. "We have to be tough on terrorists, but we also have to guard the privacy of American citizens."
Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU in Las Vegas, called the act "a seamless web of arcane provisions that fit together in ways that are still unclear to many of us."
"Last week, we found out how they could easily dig deeply into all of your private financial records without any meaningful checks, and without you knowing it," he said. "We're just now beginning to grasp how far-reaching the Patriot Act's tentacles are, and how profound its implications are for ordinary people who have nothing to do with terrorism." |
