The City Council Member: Scott Kawasaki
Fairbanks City Council Member Scott Jiu Wo Kawasaki wasn't around to experience the internment camps and scrutiny that plagued Japanese Americans in the years that followed that first Day of Infamy, but his grandparents were.
"They were first-generation American," Kawasaki says. "They were taken from their homes and brought to camps in Arkansas, Alabama, a lot of the little southern states. The fear was that if they're of Japanese descent, they might have a certain soft spot or they might align with the forces the United States were against."
At the age of 24, Scott Kawasaki became the youngest member ever to have sat on the Fairbanks City Council. Now, four years and a re-election later, Kawasaki was on the council as it unanimously passed a resolution opposing the Patriot Act in December 2002.
The resolution is two-fold, says Kawasaki.
"The primary objective is to state that we, as city officials, are opposed to certain measures of the Patriot Act," he says. "And we said, as part of the resolution, before you do anything, let's sit back and wait until legal can actually decide what's constitutional and what's not."
Kawasaki submitted his own resolution against the act to the Council, but a different resolution was taken over his--that of his polar opposite, Councilwoman Donna Gilbert, who often has disagreed with him on other issues.
"I didn't have any heartburn over using hers over mine," he says. "Basically we said the same thing. We object to the degradation of certain civil liberties as promoted by this Patriot Act."
Kawasaki says that he and Gilbert found common ground in realizing the impact of the legislation.
"Civil liberties are not Democrat versus Republican," he says. "It's not a partisan issue. It's a basic, fundamental human right that anybody can say they support."
In the 49th state, civil liberties and personal privacy are especially important, says Kawasaki.
"I mean, it's built into our state constitution," he says. "People move up here to Alaska to avoid certain government control, government issues, federal government snooping on us, basically."
There are a more than a few examples in the Patriot Act that make Kawasaki nervous.
From Section 206 to 208, the act expands powers of courts under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The expansion includes obtaining assistance from "common carriers, custodians, landlords and others," in the installation of wiretaps or the collection of information during investigations, according to a 59-page analysis of the Patriot Act by the Congressional Research Service. The sections also extend surveillance and physical search-order expiration dates to 120 days and physical search-order periods from 45 days to 90 days, respectively, and adds four more FISA-appointed judges to the system, bringing the total count to 11.
"Under the FISA court, basically the court people are appointed," says Kawasaki. "The judicial system isn't in place as it is for every other law that people break. It's a summary court. It's a little bit scary to have to go through a process where one person is judging you rather than a jury of your peers."
The definition of domestic terrorism also worries Kawasaki. Under Section 121 of the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, commonly known as Patriot II, the term "terrorist activities" is used both for both domestic and international acts of terrorism. Additionally, Section 107 eliminates the double-standard for surveillance of U.S. citizens and foreign citizens "whenever they could be used to 'obtain foreign intelligence information,'" according to an analysis of the draft legislation obtained in February 2003 by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to public-service journalism.. This means that Americans can be watched as closely as foreigners in investigations of terrorism.
"Who decides what a domestic terrorist is?" asks Kawasaki. "I think it gives the president, the secretary of state and the attorney general pretty much a broad authority and a broad brush in painting domestic terrorists that the FBI can now track."
Kawasaki thinks other politicians share his concerns.
"I think it was written in haste," Kawasaki says of the law. "I think a lot of people did not read it on the way through," he adds, "and I think a lot of congressmen and senators probably regret just voting it through real quick."
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