Some Are Waking Up

City Council takes aim at Patriot Act

By Jim Brunner
Seattle Times staff reporter

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search web archive




Condemning the expansion of police powers in the war on terrorism, the Seattle City Council yesterday approved a resolution critical of the USA Patriot Act, the broad-ranging federal law passed after Sept. 11, 2001.

The vote put Seattle in the company of more than three dozen cities and towns nationwide that have passed resolutions critical of the act. They include Oakland, Calif., San Francisco, Detroit, Denver and Cambridge, Mass., according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Seattle council members said they were aware that some might slam them for fretting about an issue that has little to do with the day-to-day business of city government. Indeed, the resolution approved yesterday has no real authority, though it requests city departments to post copies of the Bill of Rights in "prominent locations" in city buildings.

"We may take some ridicule for this," said City Council President Peter Steinbrueck. "I think that's absolutely wrong."

Steinbrueck and others said that with the nation poised on the brink of a possible war with Iraq, it was important for elected leaders to publicly defend civil liberties.

"This resolution is not just whistling in the wind. This is, I believe, ringing the Liberty Bell," said Councilman Nick Licata, who traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for a gathering of city officials opposed to a war with Iraq.

The Patriot Act expanded law-enforcement powers with the intention of making it easier for police to stop terrorists. Those powers include secret searches without warrants; reduced judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance; and increased access by federal agents to medical files, financial documents and library records.

The resolution, approved on a 6-0 vote (with Richard Conlin, Jan Drago and Richard McIver absent) yesterday, says such measures threaten the civil liberties, particularly those of "immigrants and ethnic minorities," under a "false pretense of national security or patriotic zeal."

The measure also reaffirmed support for the Seattle police intelligence ordinance, which limits the ability of local police to gather or share information on religious or political groups. Federal officials have said the city may have to alter the ordinance or risk being shut out of an emerging anti-terrorism database, though no changes have yet been proposed.