By Joan Garvin
Fear of losing personal freedoms in the government’s quest for improved homeland security prompted a group of Los Altos residents to dissect the United States Patriot Act and its effect on civil liberties at a public forum earlier this month.
Critics worry that the act was adopted with little discussion and short notice two years ago, and the scope of rights it grants the government and takes away from civil liberties was not immediately recognized.
A long list of states and cities have come forward this year to express their oppostion to key elements of the act, including six cities in Santa Clara County. Los Altos is not one of those cities.
“Fundamentally, our Council steers clear of taking positions on issues that don’t directly affect the city government,” Mayor John Moss said.
“We want the city to take a look at the Patriot Act and determine local interest,” said Ray Schuster, after the formation of Los Altos Voices for Peace, a grassroots group dedicated to preserving peace and personal freedoms that formed shortly before the war with Iraq broke out and one of the meeting’s sponsors. “We’d like to see them show more responsibility. We think the Patriot Act certainly has local impact.”
Schuster said Voices for Peace plans to approach the city council next month to ask for some sort of action against the law.
The Act, adopted after 9/11, expands the government’s investigative powers, giving the FBI and other law enforcement agencies powers such as the right to look into what books a citizen has checked out at a local library.
More than 200 attended the Dec. 4 meeting sponsored by The Los Altos Voices for Peace, the Los Altos Regional Libraries and the Los Altos/Mountain View League of Women Voters.
Assistant Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a panelist from Stanford Law School, compared possible results permitted in the act to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Cuéllar referred to a discussion he had with Fred Korematsu, the subject of the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States, on the internment. Cuéllar asked Korematsu why he stood his ground.
Korematsu admitted, “I had this girlfriend and I didn’t want to go.”
“This is still about real people who just don’t want to go,” said Cuéllar.
Cuéllar, originally from Mexico, evaluated the act from his perspective as a teacher, writer and practitioner of law. His concern is with the implementation of the act and the interpretation of some of the provisions. “The devil really is in the detail.” Samina Faheen, executive director of the American Muslim Voice based in Palo Alto and member of Silicon Valley for Civil Rights, explained her deep concerns about the Patriot Act based on her experiences within the immigrant community.
Faheen made a decision in 1986 to stay in this country rather than to return to her native Pakistan, because she believed in this country. “Not anymore,” Faheen said. “In two years, America has changed. 9/11 was a tragedy; but Muslims are afraid, terrified … I’m not going to be scared.”
Faheen lobbies statewide urging local governments to pass resolutions against the Patriot Act to prevent the “unjust treatment of anybody in our country.”
In California nine counties and 44 cities have passed resolutions protesting provisions of the Patriot Act.
Community Librarian Cheryl Houts from the Los Altos Regional Libraries explained, “After the passage of the Patriot Act, librarians began expressing their concerns.”
She read an excerpt from a statement Dr. Carla Hayden, president of American Library Association, made to a Judicial Committee Hearing, Nov. 18: “The ALA has long opposed efforts to censure, control or to oversee the information sought by the public, particularly in libraries.”
The local libraries “have long protected individuals’ privacy according to California state law. What is checked out on your library account is not information available to anyone else. Here in our local libraries we do not have Internet sign-ups. … Santa Clara County Library has configured its public access computers to make certain that data are not retained,” Houts said.
