Expands the ability of law enforcement to conduct secret searches, gives them wide powers of phone and Internet surveillance, and access to highly personal medical, financial, mental health, and student records with minimal judicial oversight.

Allows FBI Agents to investigate American citizens for criminal matters without probable cause of crime if they say it is for "intelligence purposes."

First Amendment - Freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and the press.

Fourth Amendment - Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Fifth Amendment - No person to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Sixth Amendment - Right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury, right to be informed of the facts of the accusation, right to confront witnesses and have the assistance of counsel.

Eighth Amendment - No excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment shall be imposed.

Fourteenth Amendment - All persons (citizens and noncitizens) within the US are entitled to due process and the equal protection of the laws.

• 8,000 Arab and South Asian immigrants have been interrogated because of their religion or ethnic background, not because of actual wrongdoing.
• Thousands of men, mostly of Arab and South Asian origin, have been held in secretive federal custody for weeks and months, sometimes without any charges filed against them. The government has refused to publish their names and whereabouts, even when ordered to do so by the courts.
• The press and the public have been barred from immigration court hearings of those detained after September 11th and the courts are ordered to keep secret even that the hearings are taking place.

• The government is allowed to monitor communications between federal detainees and their lawyers, destroying the attorneyclient privilege and threatening the right to counsel.
• New Attorney General Guidelines allow FBI spying on religious and political organizations and individuals without having evidence of wrongdoing.
• President Bush has ordered military commissions to be set up to try suspected terrorists who are not citizens. They can convict based on hearsay and secret evidence by only two-thirds vote.
• American citizens suspected of terrorism are being held indefinitely in military custody without being charged and without access to lawyers.

This lack of due process and accountability violates the rights extended to all persons-citizens and non-citizens-by the U.S. Constitution. The National League of Cities passed a resolution calling for revisions in the PATRIOT Act; and all across the country thousands of organizations and individuals concerned with protecting our civil liberties are campaigning to ensure that our rights are not a casualty of the Bush administration's "war on terrorism."

Join in the effort to regain our hard-won freedoms!

• Get more information. For extensive background on the PATRIOT Act, and on the more than 225 communities that have passed resolutions against the act-from Los Angeles to Chicago to Philadelphia, from Honolulu to Broward Country, Florida, to the states of Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont-got to www.aclu.org/safeandfree/
• Work with the Montclair Campaign to Defend Civil Liberties to get the Montclair Township Council to oppose the PATRIOT Act.
• Contact your state and federal elected representatives to express your opposition to the act.