Patriot Act Stands Over Students
Following is a statement by young people associated with the American Civil Liberties Union of how the Patriot Act and other Post-911 government policies have adversely affected students.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act and Other Post-911 Policies the Government Can Now:
1. Label Students “Terrorists” if We Belong to a Student Activist Group
The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so that student groups that engage in certain types of civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists
(Sections 411, 802). The Sheriff of Hennepin county, Minnesota declared that the student groups “Anti-Racist Action”, “Students Against War”, and “Arise!” were potential terrorist threats.
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2. Seize Our Student Records
The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement access to student educational records without probable cause of crime. (507) The Government refuses to disclose how many times it has done this.
3. Collect information about what books we take out of our school library, what we study, and what we purchase from our school bookstore.
The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement broad access to any types of records – sales, library, financial, medical, etc. – without probable cause of a crime. It also prohibits the holders of this information, like University librarians, from disclosing that they have produced such records, under the
threat of jail time (Section 215, 505). A University of Illinois survey of U.S. public libraries found that at least 545 libraries had been asked for records by law enforcement in the year after September 11, 2001.
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4. Search Our College Dorm Rooms, Apartments or Homes and Not Even Tell Us.
The USA PATRIOT Act allows the law enforcement to conduct secret “sneak and peek” searches of a dorm, apartment or home. Investigators can enter a place of residence, take pictures and seize items without informing the occupant that a warrant was issued for an indefinite period of time. (Section 213)
The government refuses to disclose how many times it has used this power.
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5. Monitor Student E-mail and Internet Activity
The USA PATRIOT Act permits the government to monitor Internet traffic and e-mail communications on any Internet service provider without probable cause of crime by obtaining detailed “routing” information like a web address. While this provision is supposedly aimed at lawbreakers, it sweeps broadly because e-mails and Internet traffic information of innocent students cannot be separated from the activity of targeted individuals (Section 216). The government refuses to disclose how many times it has
used this power.
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6. Spy on Student Political Meetings or Religious Ceremonies
The USA PATRIOT Act permits a vast array of information gathering on student political meetings and religious ceremonies to be collected—often by campus cops on behalf of the FBI—and shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) without proper judicial oversight or other safeguards. This law effectively puts the CIA back in the business of spying on students, including US citizens (Sections 203 and 901).
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Please go to http://www.aclu.org/ for more information on civil liberties that the ACLU has a hand in protecting.
