Terror Law: A win for fear, a loss for freedom
"Bad laws are the worst
sort of tyranny," British parliamentarian Edmund Burke explained in 1800.
Two centuries have passed,
but legislatures continue to reinforce the link between bad law and tyranny.
The U.S. Congress did so this week, with the passage of the ambitiously named Uniting and Strengthening
Rare are the moments in
American history when a Congress has surrendered so many cherished freedoms in
a single trip to the altar of immediate fear.
Crafted in Attorney General
John Ashcroft's little shop of legal horrors from the remnants of past assaults
on the Constitution, the "USA PATRIOT ACT" is a legislative
Frankenstein's monster.
"This bill goes light
years beyond what is necessary to combat terrorism," argues Laura Murphy,
Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Included in the bill are
provisions that would allow for the mistreatment of immigrants, the suppression
of dissent and the investigation and surveillance of wholly innocent
Americans."
And the bad legislation is
now the law of the land. Signed Friday by President Bush, it was opposed in the
Senate only by Russ Feingold, D-Wi.
In the House is drew broader opposition from 62 Democrats -- including the
ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Michigan's John Conyers, and
Congressional civil liberties watchdogs such as Massachusetts' Barney Frank and
Georgia's John Lewis -- as well as three Republicans and Vermont Independent
Bernie Sanders.
What freedoms have Americans
lost? Civil libertarians worry most that the new legislation:
-- Permits the Attorney
General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to
deny re-admission to the
-- Minimizes judicial
supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement
authorities in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal
investigations unrelated to terrorism.
-- Expands the ability of the
government to conduct secret searches, again in anti-terrorism investigations
AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. This means that
law enforcement authorities can enter and search an individual's home without
presenting a warrant or in any way informing the subject of the search.
-- Gives the Attorney General
and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist
organizations and to block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering
the country.
-- Makes the payment of
membership dues to political organizations a deportable offense.
-- Grants the FBI broad
access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records
about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a
court order.
-- Will lead to large-scale
investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes and
use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in
criminal cases.
-- Puts the CIA and other
intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the
Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for
intelligence surveillance in the
-- Allows searches of highly
personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on
a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even
relevancy to an ongoing terrorism investigation.
-- Allows student records to
be searched based on a very low standard of relevancy to an investigation.
-- Creates a broad new
definition of "domestic terrorism" that could target people who
engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and
enhanced penalties.
Standing alone in the Senate
to oppose the legislation, Feingold recalled past assaults on basic liberties:
"The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the
Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans
during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during
the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters,
including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the
Vietnam War."
He then explained to his
fellow senators: "Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come
a long way since the those days of infringements on
civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. And I have been
troubled in the past six weeks by the potential loss of commitment in the
Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties."
In the contemporary
legislature where he sits, the Senate of the
Berkeley Council condemns
The Council voted 5-4 to
endorse a measure that honored victims of the
September 11 terrorist attacks on the
Councilwoman Dona Spring, the
sponsor of the measure, argues that it is not appropriate to answer the deaths
of innocent civilians in the
Spring's resolution urges the
The resolution also calls for
action to combat global poverty and for the reduction of
The move is believed to be
the first condemnation by a local government of President Bush's response to
the September 11 attacks.
While there is strong
anti-war sentiment in Berkeley, Mayor Shirley Dean, who opposed the measure,
said Council members received "serious death threats" after it was
learned that the anti-bombing resolution was to be considered.
Responded Spring:
"If we (the Berkeley City Council) can't support a nonviolent
solution, when or where will some government agency do that?"
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