Civil liberties and homeland security - "The Land of the Controlled and the Home of the Secure"

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 2002 by Valerie L. Demmer

In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration reacted swiftly and boldly, implementing programs it claimed would strengthen the security of the United States. President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft have all adopted a firm and unyielding stance in executing their focused reply to the menace of global terrorism. An unfortunate byproduct of these aggressive moves, however, is the erosion of civil liberties. The administration has gone beyond the legitimate needs of national security and is infringing on constitutional freedoms in the name of patriotism and security.

The Patriot Act (Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) was signed into law by Bush on October 26, 2001, after being rushed through Congress without giving members time to properly read or interpret its provisions. According to Representative Ron Paul of Texas (one of only three Republicans in the House to vote against the bill), "The bill wasn't printed before the vote--at least I couldn't get it.... It was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote."

In an interview given to Insight, Paul further said, "The insult is to call this a 'patriot bill' and suggest I'm not patriotic because I insisted upon finding out what is in it and voting no. I thought it was undermining the Constitution, so I didn't vote for it--and therefore I'm somehow not a patriot. That's insulting."

Ostensibly an anti-terrorist bill, the Patriot Act makes changes to over fifteen different statutes. Of particular concern, the legislation permits the government to arbitrarily detain or deport suspects; to eavesdrop on Internet communications, monitor financial transactions, and obtain individuals' electronic records; and to clandestinely survey records of religious and political organizations, whose privacy rights have usually been upheld in the courts. Critics of the act contend that these McCarthy-like tactics strip citizens of their fundamental rights while not being effective in--and often not having anything to do with--stopping terrorism.

The act even allows increased surveillance of church finances and bookstore records. For example, instead of being able to ask a court to quash a subpoena for customer information, booksellers may be required to turn records over immediately. The act allows surveillance through all types of electronic communications and affects telecommunications companies, Internet providers, cable companies--indeed anyone using this technology. Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, worries that investigators "will collect more information on innocent people and be distracted from the task of actually identifying those who may be planning future attacks."

Russ Feingold (Democrat--Wisconsin), the only dissenting voice in the Senate, addressed his colleagues in the Senate before the bill's passage, pointing out that the framers of the U.S. Constitution, even though they'd just been through a war with Britain, "wrote a Constitution of limited powers and an explicit Bill of Rights to protect liberty in times of war, as well as in times of peace." Feingold added:

   Of course there is no doubt that, if we lived in a police state, it would
   be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the
   police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a
   country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your
   phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in
   a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely
   based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are
   up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more
   terrorists.

      But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live.
   And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask
   our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.

      Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now
   engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing
   a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.

And sacrificing liberties is just what the Bush administration would do. It announced last fall that 5,000 men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three were being rounded up by the FBI for questioning. The young men have been in the country for two years and are from "suspect" countries. The list was provided by Ashcroft, who emphasized that "the objective is to collect any information that the individuals on this list may have regarding terrorist elements in this country and abroad. These individuals were selected for interviews because they fit the criteria of persons who might have knowledge of foreign-based terrorists." This action was denounced by the Center for Constitutional Rights in a press release which stated: "Questioning individuals without any evidence of wrongdoing amounts to the very definitions of racial profiling.... Since September 11, we have already seen thousands of people who have been harassed by local authorities over immigration matters totally unrelated to the attacks."