SCN: Fw: Act now to protect your civil liberties

[emailer1]

In addition to a timely message about Washington state legislation, there is good contact information for contacting representatives.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Fred Miller 
To: mailto:Undisclosed-Recipient:@scn.org 
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 5:53 PM
Subject: Act now to protect your civil liberties


Friends,

Sen. Adam Kline is leading the charge against the "anti-terrorism" bills which threaten our civil liberties. He could use some help. His letter below gives the details. If you've got time, we need people to come into the Peace & Justice office (5828 Roosevelt Way NE) to phone people who don't have email, to get them to contact their legislators. Call me to set up a time,

Fred Miller

206 527-8050

 

 I need a little help here in getting the word out to civil libertarians across the state.  I need your help killing the wiretapping bill, HB 2416, and the broader House bill on Terrorism, HB 2879. 

Well, I killed them in the Senate, but the committee in the House is trying to resurrect them. I’d much appreciate it if you would let your legislators (and anyone else on your e-mail address book) know of this. Please circulate this request if you would like. 

If you don’t have your two Representatives’ e-mail addresses, here’s the formula: the first eight letters of the last name, then an underscore, then the first two letters of the first name, then @leg.wa.gov. So, Rep. Frank Chopp is chopp_fr at leg.wa.gov. (Send him a cc; he is the Speaker of the House! You can also look up your legislative district and your legislators through the Legislature’s home page, www.leg.wa.gov. The Legislature also has a toll-free Legislative Hotline where you can leave messages. The phone number is 1-800-562-6000. 

Just ask them to vote NO on the terrorism bill now before them, SB 6704, for whatever reasons motivated you to ask me – the text of SB 6704 was stripped and replaced by both HB 2416 and HB 2879. No need for any long explanation; these folks are busy. 

But if you are into details, here is what happened: there were four bills in the Senate, and four in the House. In subject matter, and in their approach to civil liberties, they vary widely.

The Governor and Attorney General had a proposal which would create a new offense, Terrorism, in two degrees of seriousness. This proposal was used in the House, and appeared as HB 2879. It criminalizes "an act" committed with terroristic intent. The "intent" is well-defined, but what’s "an act"? Asked by the Governor to file it in the Senate, I did so as a courtesy traditionally done by a Committee Chair. It is now SB 6731, but has not been advanced from the Judiciary Committee, and is not in play now. 

Instead of using Governor Locke’s proposal even as a starting point, I gathered a bi-partisan group of Judiciary members with a particular commitment to civil liberties. Together, and starting from scratch, we wrote our own bill, now SB 6704. We purposely did not create any new offense of Terrorism, but limited the offense to existing crimes, already defined by law. Rather, we drafted a narrow definition of "terrorist intent," and simply applied to it an enhanced sentence. This approach makes the least change to existing law, while accomplishing the purpose of defining and appropriately punishing criminal acts intended to coerce or intimidate the population at large.

In writing SB 6704, we were particularly aware of the need to respect the civil liberties of Washington citizens and all residents within our borders. There is no change to court procedures or the rules of evidence, and no authorization for arrest without a warrant. In fact, there is no change whatsoever in any of our customary statutory protections for civil liberties. I believe that we have succeeded in identifying the threat of terrorist acts with realism, and that we have avoided the rampant flag-waving that has clouded opinion on both sides of the aisle. 

I was also painfully aware that the House proceeded in the opposite direction. Their bill on terrorist crimes, HB 2879, created the new offense of Terrorism in two degrees, with less narrowly-drawn definitions. Further, the House had a bill, HB 2416, which expanded the authorization for wiretapping – something we purposely avoided. I let the House leadership know that any House bill that looked, felt, or smelled like Wiretapping would be dead-on-arrival in the Senate because as Chair of Senate Judiciary, I would kill the bill myself. 

As it turned out, the House passed both of these bills, and I used the power of the Chairman to kill them both. Because the prime sponsor of both House bills, Representative Chris Hurst, had given the courtesy of a hearing to SB 6704, I did the same for HB 2879. However, I called neither House bill for a vote before the deadline, Thursday, February 28, and so both died. 

On the previous day, the House Committee on Community Security had stripped the text of SB 6704, and had substituted the entire texts of both HB 2879 and HB 2416 as a "striking amendment" to our bill. The bill now goes to the House floor for a vote. I am appalled that the bill, still numbered SB 6704 – and still carrying my name as prime sponsor – now expands wiretapping in our state. 

The bill will have to come back to the Senate. I plan to move that the Senate not concur in the House amendment, and further (to quote the parliamentary language) "that the Senate insist on its position and ask that the House recede." I’m confident that I have the votes, since SB 6704 passed the Senate only a few weeks ago by a vote of 42 to 7. (Just to be sure, I’m counting the votes again!) 

I urge you to read these bills yourself, and compare them. I hope you will not lump all of these efforts together, nor assume that they are proposed only for the purpose of flag-waving. Beyond the rhetoric, there are in fact increased threats of terrorist attacks. (Think of the photos of the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline found in a cave in Afghanistan.) We must address those threats with a clear eye.

Thanks for letting me know your thinking on this issue.

Yours truly,



Senator Adam Kline

37th Legislative District

AK:sl

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