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Congress enacted the Patriot Act immediately after
the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Act dramatically expanded
the government's authority to spy on ordinary Americans. Unfortunately,
the new surveillance powers are unlikely to make Americans any safer.
What they will certainly do, however, is seriously compromise constitutional
rights that Americans have guarded jealously since the Bill of Rights
was first adopted.
Even before the Patriot Act was enacted, the FBI had the power to conduct surveillance of people who were suspected of engaging in criminal activity. It also had the authority to conduct surveillance of people who were suspected of working for foreign governments or terrorist organizations, whether or not these people were suspected of engaging in criminal activity. The main effect of new surveillance powers is to make it easier for the FBI to spy on ordinary people who are suspected neither of crime nor of working for a hostile government or terrorist organization.
New surveillance powers seriously threaten our constitutional rights. Ordinary Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is listening to their telephone conversations, reading their e-mail, or monitoring the websites they visit or the books they borrow from the library. Nor should they have to worry that the FBI will investigate them simply because they engage in political or expressive activity that is not just entirely legal but also expressly protected by the First Amendment. Recent events make it all too clear that Americans have to think seriously about how better to protect the nation against terrorist attack. Unleashing the FBI on ordinary, law-abiding people, however, is not a promising solution. The new surveillance provisions are troubling on their face. Perhaps the most worrying thing about them, however, is that we know very little about the way they are being used. Finding out is important for a number of reasons. FIRST, it's a basic principle of democracy that the people should know what the government's policies are. We believe that Americans have a right to know how pervasive FBI surveillance is, and whether such surveillance is routinely directed at American citizens or permanent residents. SECOND, we want to make sure the FBI is not abusing its new powers, as it has done in the past. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI undermined our democracy by using its surveillance powers to stifle legitimate dissent and to harass civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King. We want to make sure the FBI does not engage in this kind of activity again. THIRD, we want Americans to be able to decide for themselves whether the new surveillance powers make sense. Many of the new powers will expire in 2005 unless Congress renews them. It will be impossible for Americans to make an informed decision about renewing the powers if they don't know how the powers are being used. FOURTH, draft legislation recently leaked
to the Center for Public Integrity proposes that the FBI be given
even more surveillance power. (The legislation is called the Domestic
Security Enhancement Act.) The FBI shouldn't be given more power
while it refuses to tell Americans how it is using the powers it
already has. |
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