A PETITION TO THE
OREGON CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION SEEKING RELIEF FROM UNJUSTIFIABLY INVASIVE
PROVISIONS OF THE USA PATRIOT ACT AND OTHER ORDERS.
WHEREAS the USA PATRIOT Act weakens several right-to-privacy acts and
extends the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) against
students, faculty and staff to conduct secret searches;
WHEREAS secret
searches carried out under the USA PATRIOT Act or similar Congressional or
Executive orders include student records formerly protected under Family
Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1972 (FERPA);
WHEREAS these searches violate the privacy of property and of telephone
conversations, and examine voice mail, email, internet, library, and academic
records as well as University personnel files, threatening academic freedom;
WHEREAS the USA PATRIOT Act can order librarians and booksellers to disclose
the records of patrons, under gag order, threatening academic freedom;
WHEREAS the visa restrictions and restrictions on who can do laboratory
research and on what biological materials threaten the international exchange
of ideas;
WHEREAS compliance with Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS)
threatens the ability of scholars to travel both within the U.S. and abroad,
and threatens to punish members of the university community on the basis of
political activity unrelated to criminal or terrorist intent;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT the University of Oregon Senate, acting as the
University's Sole Governing Body, calls upon the Oregon Congressional
Delegation to promote the first amendment rights, privacy rights, and
traditional civil, intellectual, academic and political liberties of the
University Community by seeking appropriate revision of those sections of the
PATRIOT Act and other Orders that impose unjustifiable burdens on these rights
and liberties.
