Dispatches by Hank Kalet: Anti-terrorism laws encroach on civil liberties
By: Hank Kalet
It was a long, hot summer when 55 delegates from the then-13 states came together to craft what became the blueprint for our government.
That was in 1787. Missing from the convention, however, was Thomas Jefferson, probably history’s most eloquent interpreter of what has become the American concepts of freedom and liberty.
At the convention’s end, James Madison of Virginia, Jefferson’s close friend and a delegate who became the fourth president of the United States, wrote to Jefferson seeking his thoughts on the recently completed blueprint.
Jefferson, who was serving as ambassador to France, was generally supportive, but raised two reservations: He thought elected officials should be rotated out of office to prevent the creation of a permanent political elite and he believed there was a need to protect people with a bill of rights from "every government on earth."
The Bill of Rights the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution was approved in 1791 and over the years has come to be seen as the bulwark against an overzealous government. Unlike citizens of other nations, we are free to criticize our governments, to speak our minds, to print our opinions and march on the Capitol. We are secure in our homes with the knowledge that the government is not allowed to enter without at least probable cause and we have the right to face our accusers in court. All of this is in writing.
But these rights, which have sustained us for almost 210 years and have made us a beacon of liberty to much of the world, are under attack by our own government.
The latest salvo from the Bush administration appears to be still in the draft stages, at least according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog group. The center released a draft last week of a federal Justice Department proposal to expand government powers to spy on citizens.
The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, would build upon the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. According to the center, it would expand surveillance powers, allow for the secret arrest and detention of American citizens, create a DNA bank of suspected terrorists and would allow the government to strip Americans of their citizenship for belonging to groups deemed as terrorist fronts. It also would severely restrict the kind of information that could be released under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The draft legislation, which the Justice Department says is only in early discussion stages, would become just another in a long line of encroachments on liberties enacted by the Bush administration and the Ashcroft Justice Department all in the name of security.
This is an administration that likes to talk of freedom for instance, it wants us to believe that its planned dismantling of Medicare is about the "freedom to choose a doctor" but is not so keen on preserving freedoms.
Remember, it has jailed American citizens without charges or access to attorneys, claiming they were Al-Qaeda operatives. It has rounded up and kept secret the names of hundreds of foreign-born individuals, most without charges or access to legal representation. It has pushed for and signed into law legislation the PATRIOT act (officially, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) that authorized roving wiretaps, covert searches, access to student and medical records and created the possibility that political dissent and protest could be prosecuted as terrorist activity. And it has authored a plan Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) encouraging citizens to spy on their neighbors.
This does not even take into account the potential impact that the creation of massive homeland security bureaucracy might have on our liberties.
There are a lot of people out there who will see nothing wrong with this, who will say we are living in perilous times, that we must sacrifice some of our liberties for a little bit of security. Preventing future terror attacks is all that matters.
But none of these new government powers is likely to make us any safer. Terrorists will still be able to fly under the law enforcement radar, if they are so inclined.
What legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, the TIPS program and the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 will do is make us less free.
Balancing our rights against our need for security is a difficult task, one we must approach with care and a sense that what we do now will have grave implications for future generations.
Do not think this is a temporary trade-off. As the novelist and essayist Gore Vidal has pointed out, when you give up your rights you are not likely to get them back.
"Once alienated, an ‘unalienable right’ is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of Earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated."
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

