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Panel on "The War on Our Freedoms" Features Discussion with Lead Attorney in ACLU Challenge to USA PATRIOT Act
September 18, 2003
MIAMI ? The dangers of limiting civil liberties in the name of national security will be the focus of conversation on September 24 during a panel discussion with leading scholars, journalists and civil liberties experts who will explain why these implications are ultimately destructive of American values and ideals.
The panel discussion, co-sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, will be at 7 p.m. September 24 at Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus, 300 NE 2nd Avenue, Auditorium 1261, located on the Second floor of Building 1. The event is free and open to the public.
National ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, will describe the ACLU's work in calling for greater oversight of the USA PATRIOT Act, a sweeping collection of new law enforcement powers adopted with virtually no debate in the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001. She is lead counsel in the first-ever legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act, taking aim at Section 215 of the controversial law that vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States.
Beeson will detail her experiences in working with advocacy and community groups from across the country ? plaintiffs in the Section 215 lawsuit who believe they are currently the targets of government investigations because of their ethnicity, religion and political associations. She also will read from her first-person account in Chapter 13 of "The War on Our Freedoms" in which she describes her own personal struggle to defend rights in the aftermath of the attacks.
Published by Public Affairs Books, the book features essays by 14 leading thinkers, scholars, journalists and historians who comment on the civil liberties implications of the government's response to terrorism in America, specifically detailing how the judiciary is being undermined, the press is being intimidated, racial profiling is rampant and privacy is being invaded.
Beeson will be joined by Greg Anrig, Jr., of the New York-based Century Foundation and co-editor of "The War on Our Freedoms." Rounding out the panel will be John Stacks, former Executive Editor of "Time" Magazine. He authored the book's tenth chapter, "Watchdogs on a Leash: Closing Doors on the Media," which discusses how officials in Washington have "stopped talking to the press except in set-piece briefings" and thus deny the public "access to the workings of the government it elected."
