Opinion Editorial:
Rumblings of Freedom?
by Chip Pitts, Board President, Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Listen closely, and you can hear a growing bipartisan chorus of the people and their representatives reclaiming their freedoms.
Late last year, a brave group of Republican as well as Democratic Senators temporarily delayed the renewal of 16 expiring provisions of the so-called “USA Patriot Act.” This law, hastily passed in the weeks after 9/11, greatly expanded governmental powers in ways that have concerned both conservative groups, like Bob Barr’s Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, and progressive groups like the ACLU.
Congress continues to battle over the 16 provisions that were temporarily extended. Most provisions of the Patriot Act, however, aren’t expiring and haven’t even been debated. These include vague definitions of “terrorism” that discourage peaceful dissent, and governmental powers to detain foreigners indefinitely on the say-so of just one person, the Attorney General. With almost all its provisions becoming permanent, the Patriot Act will continue to be used not just against terrorists but as a routine part of domestic criminal law enforcement and in ways that affect the rights of everyone in the country.
The administration simultaneously argues that these extraordinary
powers are both “nothing new” – and simultaneously
“indispensable” to fighting terrorism. They can’t
have it both ways.
They say that there have been no “abuses” under the law.
But the mere existence of a law that allows secret searches and seizures
without due process and equal protection is an abuse. And numerous
cases have come to light of specific abuses under the law. These range
from library searches held unconstitutional to cases like that of
Brandon Mayfield (the Portland attorney wrongly accused based on Patriot
Act information of being involved in the Madrid bombings). Tens of
thousands of “national security letters” have been issued
under the Patriot Act to American businesses, schools, libraries,
and medical offices without prior court authorization, each potentially
reaching the records of many more people.
Bush apologists in the House of Representatives are willing to make a few improvements around the edges, including requiring more reporting to Congress on the number of times these powers have been used. But as U.S. News and World Report says, the feds would still have a “virtually free hand to secretly rummage through the records and homes of ordinary Americans, even those with no ties to suspected terrorists or spies.”
That’s why more than 400 communities, from both red and blue states, have joined with the nation’s leading business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, to demand that fact-based, individualized suspicion and real judicial review be reinserted into the law.
“Just trust us” doesn’t cut it when we know that the National Security Agency and Pentagon have been illegally spying on American citizens (including such dangerous “threats” as the Quakers and the Catholic Workers). Thousands of Americans have had their phone calls listened to and their emails read without the traditional probable cause required by the fourth amendment to the Constitution.
Disturbingly reminiscent of Nixon’s “enemies list” and the discredited COINTELPRO activity, these counterproductive and un-American activities harm security in many ways. Confusing innocent Americans with al Qaeda wastes limited resources. As FBI officials have complained, it adds to the quantity of useless data to be sifted through. And spying on activists deters the scrutiny and criticism needed to correct government overreaching and mistakes.
Rights such as free speech, free religion, privacy, due process of law, equal protection, and fair, speedy trials are not mere abstract values. They are immensely practical values, crystallizing thousands of years of wisdom on how to achieve societies that are safe and secure as well as free and prosperous.
Join the chorus: call and write your Senators and Congressmen, and get your friends, neighbors, and colleagues to do the same. Tell your representatives to insist that no part of the Patriot Act be reauthorized until the law is amended to include traditional checks and balances, meaningful judicial review, and fact-based, individualized suspicion. Together, the people and the people’s representatives can recapture our vanishing freedoms.
Chip Pitts, a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, serves as Board President of the nationwide Bill of Rights Defense Committee (www.bordc.org).