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November 29, 2001 'Smatter Of Fact "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin’s 1759 utterance is now a time-honored rallying cry of civil libertarians in America. It is therefore ironic that America’s government is urging citizens to give up that very liberty. It’s even more ironic that this is packaged as crucial to winning the homefront side of a war called "Operation Enduring Freedom." In October, Congress passed the Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act. The act contains several alarming features, not the least of which is the expansion of the electronic surveillance powers of law enforcement. The FBI has wasted no time exploring the technology that will enable it to make the life of every visitor to cyber space an open book. According to the Associated Press, "Magic Lantern" and "Cyber Knight" technologies "would allow investigators to secretly install over the Internet eavesdropping software that records every keystroke on a person’s computer." Not only can the FBI spy on us — we might not even know it. Ostensibly, the FBI needs a court order, but this is hardly a reassurance. If the technology can be implemented secretly, will the FBI trouble to get that court order? While this is only a possibility and thus hardly firm cause for any alarmist conspiracy theories, it should nonetheless give one pause for thought. So should the fact that the FBI has already begun to monitor calls between terror suspects and their lawyers — another gross breach of rights now permitted under the banner of "safety." (The monitoring is permitted under an Oct. 31 Federal Register Rule). Without adequate information, attorneys cannot present the adequate defense their clients are entitled to. If the defendant, stripped of privacy rights, must suddenly be concerned with who’s listening, how forthcoming will he or she be with that information? One wonders what might be next — bugging confessionals in hopes of hearing: "Forgive me, father, for I have sent anthrax to Tom Daschle"? Most provisions of the PATRIOT Act (a clever acronym but a misnomer if there ever was one) are to sunset in four years, but this isn’t much reassurance either. On many levels, the act conveniently ignores another document — the U.S. Constitution. And what purpose will this act and these rules ultimately serve? Will temporarily transforming America into a police state keep it safe from terrorists? Bad news for those who think so: Terrorists are unpredictable. September 11 proves it. Terrorists need not be driven by complicated plots that can only be ferreted out by Big Brother spying on everyone. All the wiretaps in the world are unlikely to prevent a murderer with control of an aircraft from slamming that aircraft into the building of his choice. The beliefs that drive terrorists cannot be legislated out of existence any more than umpteen gun laws can legislate psychopathic violence out of existence. The anti-terrorist measures as they stand assume that no one is to be trusted. The time-honored presumption of innocent until proven guilty is ignored — we are all criminals until we can prove otherwise. Now the final irony. For this, the destruction of our freedoms, Uncle Sam would have us be grateful. For the as-yet poor guarantee of safety, Uncle Sam would have us play along. "Real" Americans are to understand that we are at war and to agree that this somehow changes everything America stands for; that civil liberties must be rendered up on the altar of security, and that, for four years, the Constitution itself can be suspended. Through this endless litany of rhetoric and scare tactics, Uncle Sam disingenuously insists: "I am defending your liberty and keeping you safe." Funny. Sounds like a case of neither-nor to me. |
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