By BETH RUCKER, [email protected]
September 22, 2003

Mary Leiberman said the USA Patriot Act affected her when the FBI served her a subpoena to turn over all her files regarding clients from Iraq.

Leiberman, director of Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services in Knoxville, filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but the judge in the case refused to rule. Instead, the FBI accepted an agreement that Leiberman would submit only names, addresses and phone numbers.

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"The other half of the agreement was that they could come back any time to demand the rest of the information in the files," she said.

This led Bridge, a service that helps refugees create, establish and maintain a new life in East Tennessee, to join a lawsuit filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging parts of the USA Patriot Act, which became law after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Leiberman will join other panelists for a public forum tonight titled "Reclaiming our Rights: A Community Response to the USA Patriot Act." The two-hour forum, sponsored by the Greater Knoxville Civil Liberties Alliance, starts at 6 p.m. in the Small Assembly Room of the City County Building.

Also on the panel will be Holly Buentiempo-Wade of the Progressive Student Alliance at the University of Tennessee, Barry Hargrove of the ACLU, Suzanne Pharr of the Highlander Research and Education Center, and Doug Raber of the UT School of Information Sciences.

The Patriot Act became law after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001. It permits authorities to monitor books people read and conduct secret searches.

"Really our main purpose is to raise public awareness and the collective consciousness about those portions of the Patriot Act that could be easily construed as oppressive to our civil liberties," said Chris Hargrove of the Greater Knoxville Civil Liberties Alliance.

ACLU of Tennessee's executive director, Hedy Weinberg, said that town meetings discussing the Patriot Act would give the public a chance to "demand that civil liberties not be taken away."

She said the ACLU chose to file the lawsuit against the Patriot Act after repeated attempts to get Congress to repeal parts of the act failed.

"The government does and should have the responsibility to ensure safety for all of us," she said. "At the same time, government has the responsibility to ensure the constitutional guarantees of the Bill of Rights."

The ACLU is challenging what many civil-liberties organizations regard as the most controversial part of the act: Section 215. According to the ACLU, Section 215 allows the FBI to seize records without a search warrant; obtain information about a person's reading habits, religious affiliations and Internet use, and impose a "gag order" on those served with Section 215 orders.

"The Patriot Act gave the executive branch sweeping new powers that undermine the Bill of Rights and are unnecessary to keep us safe," Weinberg said.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has been on a national tour promoting the Patriot Act, told a gathering in Memphis on Thursday that the war on crime and terror is being won without compromising freedom.