The Ames City Council listened, debated and nitpicked before coming to a contentious decision regarding its position on the Bill of Rights and the USA Patriot Act at its meeting Tuesday night.

The council, after three amendments, approved a resolution from the Ames Committee for the Defense of the Bill of Rights calling for the city’s affirmation of its belief in civil liberties and opposition to portions of the USA Patriot Act.

The USA Patriot Act is an anti-terrorism bill granting, among other things, broader surveillance and search and seizure capabilities for federal law enforcement, as well as the right for such agencies to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without access to a lawyer.

Ames Committee for the Defense of the Bill of Rights members and others expressed concern such provisions violated constitutional amendments and could violate the rights of innocent individuals in both Ames and ISU communities.

“Government is based on the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of that law,” said Adrian Bennet, 2636 Ross Road. “Each of us must be an activist to preserve those rights.”

Several council members expressed concern that the resolution as presented, which denounced the act as a whole and requested several actions on the part of the mayor and council to guard against federal government-authorized intrusion of privacy under the act, was too stringent.

Councilmen Matthew Goodman and Russ Cross said they believed the council could not justify passing the resolution given their scant knowledge of the bill and the lack of specific instances of constitutional violations in the community.

“How can I justify making a statement on an act I don’t understand the way a lawyer or [national] legislator does?” Goodman asked.

These objections were countered by several speakers who argued the secrecy written into the act, available public condemnation of the act from multiple and diverse organizations and vague instances in the community were reason enough for the council to support the resolution. The discussion took more than an hour.

Caleb Christensen, senior in physics, illustrated the point with his experience gathering signatures for a petition in support of the resolution.

“I talked to two people in the Ames community — one of them an ISU professor — who refused to sign the petition [because they] have already been threatened with deportation,” he said.

The council amended the resolution, cutting out more than half of its clauses. The council removed most mention of the USA Patriot Act specifically and removed any city action in response to the act beyond sending a fax to the Iowa congressional delegation, President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft affirming city support for constitutional and immigrant rights and American safety from threats. The resolution did allow the city to encourage the Ames Public Library to post a sign warning borrowers their records could be seized under the act.