ACLU president warns of eroding freedoms in US.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Steven H. Foskett Jr.

WORCESTER - The gigantic - and largely secretive - national security apparatus in the United States that grew exponentially after Sept. 11, 2001, has caught in its wide dragnet innocent people and eroded civil liberties for American citizens, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union told an audience at Clark University last night.

Susan N. Herman, author of "Taking Liberties: the War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy," told harrowing stories of innocent people harassed or imprisoned, and detailed bizarre stories of people like Nick Merrill, an Internet service provider who, under a gag order from the government, couldn't even tell his own son he was challenging in court the government's decision to request information about his clients using the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law passed by Congress in 2001 in the wake of the attacks.

Mr. Merrill and other groups, including librarians, wanted to speak publicly about "national security letters" they had been given requesting information about clients, which included admonishments that they could never talk about it.

Ms. Herman said Mr. Merrill told her his problem wasn't necessarily with the gag order preventing him from identifying the clients the government requested information about. His concern, she said, was that at the time, he could not tell his story while government officials were downplaying the extent to which the national security letters were being used.

Ms. Herman said that at one point, a New York Times article identified the head of a Connecticut library association as one of the people challenging the government over the letters, effectively "letting the cat out of the bag."

"The government said, no, the cat is back in the bag," and continued to enforce the gag orders - at least until the provisions of the Patriot Act covering the national security letters were extended by Congress, Ms. Herman said.

The secrecy the government insists on prevents a full discussion of whether the provisions of the Patriot Act are even working, Ms. Herman said.

"My concern is that people think `it's not happening to me,'" Ms. Herman said. "But it...