WESTERN SKIES - July 23, 2005

*** COMMENTARY: JUST SAY NO TO PATRIOT ACT ***

ERIC WHITNEY: The Patriot Act is up for reauthorization. Congress is deliberating whether to make some controversial portions of the four-year-old law permanent. Commentator Greg Walta, of Colorado Springs, thinks that's a bad idea.

GREG WALTA: Just forty-five days after the September eleventh attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act. Its passage was controversial because the bill was introduced on the morning of October twenty-fourth and was approved later that same day. Members of Congress didn't have time to read the Act, which is over three hundred pages long, much less consider its impact on our liberty.

Don Young, a conservative Congressman from Alaska, described passage of the Patriot Act this way, "It was stupidÉit was what you'd call 'emotional voting' because we didn't study it."

Now, we're not a police state. We're the land of the free. We shouldn't let the Patriot Act take us down a path that erodes the fundamental rights embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Here are some of the problems.

Section 213 of the Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to search people's homes and offices without telling him. These secret searches are called "sneak-and-peek" searches. What does that mean? Federal agents are allowed to sneak into your private home or office, rifle through your things, download your computer files, take DNA samples, and even seize property. Without telling you for an indefinite period. Until now, this type of government spying was done by totalitarian regimes. It was not done here, not in America.

Even worse, Section 213 is not limited to terrorism investigations. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the FBI can conduct "sneak-and-peek" searches as part of investigations into minor crimes, without proving that the search is connected to terrorism.

Other provisions of the Patriot Act that violate the Bill of Rights, are Sections 215 and 505. These provisions allow the FBI to collect your medical information, bank statements, library records, emails or internet activity. without any showing of probable cause. To gain access to this private information in the hands of third parties, all the FBI needs to do is send a letter, known as a national security letter, requesting it. There is no judicial oversight controlling the issuance of these secret letters. And there is no public scrutiny because the Act imposes a gag order, prohibiting any person served with such a letter from telling you or anyone else about it, ever.

All this violates your right to privacy and your fundamental right to know what your government is doing to you.

Congress knew it was on shaky ground when it passed the Patriot Act. This is why many Patriot Act provisions sunset after four years. In the coming days, Congress will decide whether to make these provisions permanent. Let's not let the war on terror claim America's Bill of Rights as its biggest casualty.

Join me in a rally calling on Congress to bring the Patriot Act into line with the Bill of Right. The rally begins at noon on Tuesday, July twenty-sixth, downtown at the Penrose Library, on the corner of Cascade and Kiowa. There will be simultaneous rallies in Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs. For more information, visit the ACLU website at www.aclu-co.org.


WHITNEY: Greg Walta is an attorney in private practice in Colorado Springs, and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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And that wraps up this edition of Western Skies. Stephen Raher is our associate producer, Delaney Utterback handles the computers. I'm Eric Whitney, thanks for tuning in.