The Little Brown Reader

2003 Year in Review from BORDC

2003 Year in Review

In 2003, millions of U.S. citizens and noncitizens turned to the Bill of Rights and exercised its protections to restore and uphold essential rights and freedoms that help define our country. Congress and the Justice Department noticed.

As we look forward to 2004, BORDC reviews some highlights of the past year.

Grassroots news

• The number of Civil Liberties Safe Zones increased more than tenfold, from 22 communities in 2002 to 230 cities, towns, and counties and three states by the end of 2003. The number of people protected by Civil Liberties Safe Zones grew to over 30 million (more than 10 percent of the United States population!).

  • March 4: highest number of resolutions passed in one day, twelve, including the first ballot initiative (Montpelier, VT).
  • April 2: first ordinance passed (Arcata, CA).

  • April 25: first state resolution passed (Hawai'i).

• The distribution of civil liberties resolutions across 37 of the 50 states should surprise former Justice Department spokesperson Barbara Comstock, who claimed that “about 45 percent of them, almost half, are either in cities in Vermont, very small populations, or in sort of college towns in California.”

• Attention to the Patriot Act also increased among campuses, labor unions, religious bodies, and other types of organizations.

• On June 5, Attorney General Ashcroft mentioned the "Bill of Rights defense movement" twice in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

• In August and September, the Attorney General embarked on a month-long 30-city tour to defend the Patriot Act. Thousands of protestors showed up at his campaign stops and held signs outside his closed-door meetings before hand-picked audiences of uniformed law enforcement. During the tour, 27 cities passed resolutions against the Patriot Act, and tens of thousands of Americans looked into the Patriot Act.

• In October, more than 200 people from 27 states met for the first time at the first annual Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights conference. Participants look forward to more regional and national conference and ongoing communication via a listserve.

Legislation

• On February 7, the Center for Public Integrity posted the leaked Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 on its website. The public outcry over the bill dubbed "Patriot II" has prevented its subsequent introduction in Congress. However, a section of the bill, which expands the FBI's authority to issue national security letters by changing the definition of "financial institutions," was inserted into the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, which President Bush signed into law in December. Other Patriot II sections may be introduced piecemeal in 2004.

• Last March, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the first piece of legislation aimed at rolling back the powers granted by the USA Patriot Act, the Freedom to Read Protection Act (HR 1157). The bill enjoys bi-partisan support with 144 co-sponsors. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced the companion Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act (S.1507). The SAFE Act and the Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act are among more than a dozen other bills to restore liberties and rights already introduced. The CLEAR Act and other legislation to strengthen the Patriot Act have also been introduced.

• On July 23, by a vote of 309-118, the House approved a bipartisan amendment offered by Congressmen C.L. "Butch" Otter (R-ID), Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) to withhold funding for "sneak-and-peek" searches under the USA PATRIOT Act. The nearly 3-1 vote marks the first time either chamber of Congress has acted to roll back any provision of the law. Despite the amendment's overwhelming House support, the conferees who worked out differences between the House and Senate versions of the Intelligence Authorization Act dropped the amendment from the final bill.

• On September 25 Congress de-funded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)'s controversial Terrorism Information Awareness (formerly the Total Information Awareness) program. A month earlier, John Poindexter resigned as head of the Office of Information Awareness. DARPA has transferred some TIA research and tools to other agencies.

Reports and Court Decisions: Special Registration, Detentions, and Enemy Combatants

• In June, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report concluding that the Justice Department had detained hundreds of Arab and Muslim men who had no ties to the September 11 attacks or to terrorism for several months without charges or access to attorneys. In December, Fine released another report finding that dozens of detainees held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn were physically and verbally abused by prison guards.

• In November, the Supreme Court agreed to test the constitutionality of powers that the Bush Administration has claimed since September 11, 2001: in Rasul v. Bush and Odah v. United States, it will decide whether the non-U.S. citizens being held in prison at Guantanamo Bay should be given access to U.S. courts. In early January the Supreme Court also agreed to hear Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, to decide whether the government can hold Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan, indefinitely without charges filed and without access to an attorney.

• On December 18, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New York, ruled that it is unlawful for the U.S. government to detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant. The court ordered the government to either release Jose Padilla (the only person whom the ruling affects) or transfer him to civilian custody within 30 days.

• On the same day, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, ruled that the cases of some 600 detainees at Guantanamo have to be open to judicial scrutiny, and that the Bush administration is violating international law and the U.S. Constitution by holding detainees on a U.S. Navy base without legal protections.

• Nearly 85,000 men from North Korea and 24 Muslim countries reported to INS facilities for NSEERS "special registration." The expensive program did not turn up any terrorists, but 13,000 of the men who voluntarily reported are in deportation proceedings. Rumors that the program has ended are untrue: Beginning December 2, 2003, men from 25 countries who have already registered do not need to reregister annually. Point of entry follow-up interviews are also suspended. However, several parts of the Special Registration program remain. Read AILA's summary of changes to the Department of Homeland Security's Special Registration program.

• In December 2003, the NSEERS program was supplemented by US-VISIT, a program that takes biometric measurements of people including fingerprints and face scans from certain countries. For more information, see the Center for American Progress's analysis of the new program.

Silencing Dissent

• The Secret Service shelters President Bush from peaceful protesters. The Administration also demanded that areas of the U.K. and Australia be "scrubbed" of protesters during the president's visits.

• In October, police stifled dissent at the FTAA protests.

• An FBI memo dated October 15 asks local law enforcement to report antiwar protests and other activities protected by the First Amendment which they consider "suspicious" to the FBI's counterterrorism units.