Are we safe yet?
The Washington Post writes on 1/20/2009: "'The OIG [Office of the Inspector General] report finds no intentional attempts to obtain records that counterterrorism personnel knew they were not legally entitled to obtain,' said Michael P. Kortan, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs. 'No FBI employee obtained telephone records for reasons other than a legitimate investigative interest. FBI employees involved in this matter obtained the telephone records at issue to perform their critical mission to prevent a terrorist attack or otherwise to support a counterterrorism investigation.'" And so goes the public relations spin from our government.
"Trust us," they told us. "We won't abuse our new Patriot Act powers. We will only use them to investigate terrorists!"
Now we find out that they improperly obtained access to records for thousands of phone numbers. Were there really that many phone numbers involved in terrorism? I don't think so! Many Americans and government officials think that anyone who is swarthy-looking is a terrorist. Yet in today's diverse America such people could be your neighbors, spouses, relatives and friends. Additionally National Security Letters used to get these records make it easy to fish for leads in investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism. They encourage lazy investigative techniques. They are killing dolphins when fishing for tuna using overly large nets.
Ever since the Nixon era, our government has been chipping away at our civil rights slowly but surely in the guise of fighting one war or another. First it was the War on Drugs, and now it's the War on Terrorism. Anytime you label something a war, you give yourself permission to do things that you wouldn't otherwise have the right to do so. Since these wars are open ended - we will never be entirely free of drugs or terrorism - our government will continue to chip away at our rights. This is like the frog that doesn't jump out of the boiling cauldron because it only realizes that the water is getting warmer when its too late.
Surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act expired at the end of last year and are slated to be renewed in February or March. The Obama administration is in favor of the renewal. Congress should resist renewing the more heinous portions of the act where the government can obtain records and do surveillance without the oversight of a judge.
As we continue to lose our freedoms we slowly become more like the terrorists and the societies they live in without ever realizing it. They don't have to kill us to win. George Orwell's 1984 was on the mark even if it was wrong by a few decades.
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