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"Civil Liberties in a Time of Crisis: When Resistance is Patriotic"
April 2003 Edition of the ACLU of Florida Newsletter
By Howard L. Simon
Executive Director
The Bush administration, apparently, is counting on war to distract us from recognizing how profoundly our democracy has changed as a result of the powers Congress granted the administration and pronounced in Executive Orders by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The major change is the USA Patriot Act, passed just weeks after the terrible events of September 11th. By restricting the role of the courts, the Patriot Act undermines the system of checks and balances that protects everyone from overzealous law enforcement.
The ACLU is fighting the shroud of secrecy that now hides much of the government's actions. The attorney general continues to fight release of the names, charges and whereabouts of more than 1,200 people who have been detained since September 11. And regardless of the rebuke the administration received in one of the ACLU's cases by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Damon Keith ("Democracies die behind closed doors."), the attorney general continues to fight to conduct secret immigration and deportation hearings.
In addition, since September 11, race and religion have become proxies for suspicion. The government has treated thousands of innocent Arabs, Arab Americans, and Muslims as suspected terrorists. Visitors from specific countries have been fingerprinted; the government has tried to ban the employment of any non-citizen as an airline screener; and it has interrogated thousands of young men around the country who were not suspected of any crime.
Since September 11, the government has also unleashed a new wave of spying on law-abiding citizens. With a stroke of the pen, Ashcroft loosened guidelines that limit FBI spying, allowing agents to infiltrate political meetings and houses of worship without any evidence of criminal activity.
The attorney general also tried to enlist Americans to spy on their neighbors. The TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) program would have turned local cable or gas technicians into government-sanctioned spies ? until the ACLU organized nationwide protests that forced Congress to cancel funding for TIPS. A similar campaign has stalled the TIA (Total Information Awareness) program, an even more extensive system to place every American under surveillance.
It was recently revealed that the attorney general's staff has secretly drafted new legislation ? the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, a USA Patriot Act II. Despite the lack of congressional inquiry into how the powers already granted in the USA Patriot Act I have been used - or abused - by the administration, the draft legislation contains sweeping new law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers.
Patriot Act II would authorize the government to create a DNA database of "suspected terrorists," strip citizenship from any American who supports even the legal activities of any group the attorney general labels "terrorist," and nullify court orders that limit political surveillance by state and local law enforcement. The restrictions on political surveillance were hard fought victories for civil liberties during the 1970s.
Are we now blindly repeating the abuses of McCarthyism during the Cold War and the shameful scapegoating of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Not unlike our nation's beginnings, patriotism means resistance ? now, resisting those who seek to turn America into a police state as the response to terrorist threats.
And resistance is mounting. As of this writing, more than sixty local communities, including one in Florida, have passed resolutions opposing the dramatic expansion of the government's powers under the USA Patriot Act. You too can demonstrate your patriotic resistance by organizing locally in order to ensure that our voices are heard by Congress.
The ACLU needs your support in order to stand up to those, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, who are trying to convince America that freedom needs to be curtailed in order to make us safer. A false choice if there ever was one!
