ARIZONA CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
""Let Justice Bloom in the Desert""
Jean Braucher,., President
Steve Lee, Esq., General Counsel
v
Eleanor Eisenberg, Esq*., Executive Director
Pamela K. Sutherland, Esq., Legal Director
Robert Wright, Administrator
May 6, 2003
Senator John Kyl
By Fax: 202/228-0542
Re: Public Misstatements about USA PATRIOT Act
Dear Senator Kyl:
On behalf of the more than 4,000 members of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, we write to bring to your attention inaccuracies in your recent letter to the Tucson Mayor and City Council regarding the USA PATRIOT Act.
In your letter, you state, ""prior to the Patriot Act, existing law allowed the government to seek court orders to monitor only land telephone lines, but not cell phones, which are much more attractive to terrorists."" You go on to say that the ""Patriot Act also updates the law to include Internet communications such as email.""
We would like to bring to your attention Title 18 of the United States Criminal Code Section § 2518, which prior to passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, allowed a court to authorize interception of ""wire, oral, or electronic communication."" In 1986, the act was amended to include electronic, as well as wire and oral communications, thus covering telephones, cell phones, e-mail, and faxes. In 1998, the statute was amended to allow so-called ""roving"" wiretaps.
The only PATRIOT Act provision dealing with roving wiretaps concerns authorizations for wiretaps under FISA, and this provision has not been the primary focus of the controversy surrounding the PATRIOT Act.
We share your concerns about arming federal agencies with the appropriate tools to fight terrorism. That's why we object to those provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that go too far, essentially sending law enforcement agencies on fishing expeditions and putting agencies in the business of monitoring law-abiding citizens rather than pursuing actual terrorists.
We thank you for the attention paid to our community resolution, although we question your assertion that the Tucson City Council has joined a ""miniscule minority"" in passing a resolution expressing opposition to those parts of the USA PATRIOT Act that go too far. To date, Flagstaff as well as 97 other communities, including the entire state of Hawaii, that represent over 8.4 million people across the country have passed such resolutions affirming the citizenry's support for civil liberties.
At the national level, a diverse array of organizations including Eagle Forum, Americans for Tax Reform, American Conservative Union, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union have joined forces to urge Congress to amend the USA PATRIOT Act to bring it back in line with the Constitution.
We urge you to publicly correct misstatements made in your letter to the Tucson Mayor and the City Council. We further urge you to use your position as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information to call for a full and fair review of the USA PATRIOT Act in its entirety. It is important that the public as well as Congress have all the facts in making decisions which result in trade-offs between liberty and security.
Thank you for your consideration of our views.
Sincerely,
Eleanor Eisenberg
Executive Director
Arizona Civil Liberties Union
*admitted in California