Volume CXXXIII, Number 4 October 3, 2003 f

The Patriot Act: A misguided attack on American civil liberties
BEN KREIDER
CONTRIBUTOR

Nearly 20 years after 1984, George Orwell's frightening vision of a paranoid world where the government monitors citizens' private lives is becoming all too real. In the wake of patriotic sentiment following September 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the rest of the Bush administration are egregiously violating our civil liberties and misleading citizens about their actions.

On October 26, 2001, barely six weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, Congress overwhelmingly supported a bill known as the USA Patriot Act. Not wanting to be accused of being unpatriotic, our nation's lawmakers hastily and foolishly spent little time debating the measure before voting in favor of it. Only one courageous member of the Senate voted against the act. Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, the lone dissenter, commented that few senators had read the summary of the bill, let alone the fine print.

The bill was intended to make it easier for federal authorities to monitor the activities of terrorists and eventually bring them to justice. Under the new law, the FBI can monitor email, medical records, and library accounts. Federal authorities may also legally wiretap phone lines, break into homes and offices, and indefinitely detain immigrants, all without a court order.

One of the most controversial sections of the act is Section 215, which allows federal authorities to search the records of libraries and bookstores. Not only that, but those asked to reveal the records can be prosecuted if they refuse to comply. The American Library Association and librarians nationwide have denounced the act, calling it an extreme violation of privacy.

While I can understand the government's desire to better pursue and prosecute alleged terrorists, why should they know what books I am reading? Am I a terrorist merely because I have checked out books on topics including socialism, communism, Islam, and Hitler? Furthermore, it remains unclear to me why the government is trying to intimidate librarians by ordering them to keep their mouths shut.

One of the most troublesome aspects of the Patriot Act is that until recently, information on how and how often the FBI has used the Patriot Act was impossible to obtain. Under a great deal of pressure from groups such as the ACLU, the Justice Department finally released a memo claiming that it has never invoked Section 215.

In a speech in Memphis, the attorney general lashed out at critics of the act, calling them "hysterics." He further commented that the charges "are revealed for what they are: castles in the air built on misrepresentation; supported by unfounded fear; held aloft by hysteria."

It seems to me that Ashcroft is the one who is acting irrationally. First of all, there are doubts about whether his statement is true. Various people have come forward and claimed that the FBI searched their library records. Even if Ashcroft is telling the truth, the fact that Section 215 has not been invoked would not justify its existence.

The fact is that the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and requires authorities to obtain search warrants. As ACLU attorney Ann Beeson pointed out in a September 19 article in The Washington Post, "They could use it tomorrow and we would never know, and that makes it extremely dangerous."

Those who oppose the act are portrayed as unpatriotic citizens who do not care about the welfare of their country. That could hardly be further from the truth. Dissent is essential in a functional democracy, and it is cowardly to call someone un-American for standing up for his civil liberties. As the cute little button on my backpack says, "Dissent is patriotic." Makes sense to me. The fact that individuals care enough about the state of their country to publicly protest the curtailing of civil liberties is a sure sign that they love their nation.

Our country is allegedly the cradle of democracy and the birthplace of freedom, yet our government is threatening to do away with the very civil liberties our nation's founders fought so hard for. It would truly be a shame if the recent wave of patriotic fervor denied U.S. citizens their most basic rights and freedoms. Understandably, national security is important, but it will be fruitless if we can only achieve it at the expense of our fundamental rights.

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