Have civil liberties restrictions gone too far?

The passage of the USA Patriot Act this October allowed the federal government to increase the scope of its powers to include the investigation and detention of suspected terrorists.

The federal government assumed a frightening myriad of powers in the wake of Sept 11. These include allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to eavesdrop on conversations between clients and their lawyers, ordering interrogations of 5,000 Middle Eastern men visiting the United States, detaining over 600 people on dubious charges in a national dragnet and practicing secret searches and racial profiling.

While the government's actions are excessive and damaging, their greatest fallacy lies in the logic behind them. It is bitterly ironic that while American soldiers are fighting for enduring freedom in Afghanistan, many Americans are losing a different battle to preserve sacred freedoms here at home.

The abandonment of civil liberties damages America's world image and, perhaps most importantly, provides a key victory for the terrorists who hate us. Current civil liberty infringements erode the view of America as a pillar of freedom that cannot be compromised. Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky explained in The Washington Post on Nov 19: "People who defend dictatorship say, ‘You see? In America they are also talking about dictatorship, too.'"

While the government has by no means become as totalitarian as the Taliban, it is worth speculating how far along that slippery slope it may traverse. The destruction of the U.S. and its principles is, after all, the goal of al-Qaeda. Sad it is, then, that in our efforts to root out terrorists, we inadvertently accomplish their goals for them.

While the excessive violation of individual rights is partially unconstitutional, it is also unwarranted. The government's failure to prevent the attacks on Sept 11 was a product of its ineffective use of intelligence and the existing court system. The government had many of the hijackers under surveillance and has had Osama bin Laden on its radar screen for many years. The problems lay in a lack of vigilance and funding to pursue the terrorists, not power. Circumventing the judicial process—through suspending attorney-client privilege, conducting secret searches and detaining without due process—surely deserves a much better justification.

Proponents of the government measures argue that because public opinion is in their favor, they must be in the right. Support may exist, but it is likely that the current surge of it is the result of emotions that will fade in coming months. "In periods of high stress and threat, support for civil liberties goes down," explained Williams College political scientist George Marcus in The Washington Post on Nov 29. When that stress dissipates—as it inevitably will as Americans step down from a heightened state of alert—the government's newfound power will not. Those in favor of civil liberty restrictions would be wise to note that, historically, it's always harder to get back basic freedoms than it is to surrender them.

As Americans, it is our civic duty to be wary of actions that jeopardize the essential freedoms, not only of our own, but also of the worldwide community. Let's not permit the tenets of our democracy to be yet another casualty of Sept 11.