Last Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives failed to extend the life of three surveillance provisions in the Patriot Act, tools intelligence agencies say are necessary to public safety in the post-9/11 world.
Those provisions allowed the FBI to continue monitoring a subject's communications even when they move without having to get a new court order – roving wiretaps. Another allowed court-ordered access to “any tangible thing” deemed essential in an investigation, the “library records” provision while the third permitted secret surveillance of non-U.S. people not affiliated with a terrorist organization – the “lone wolf.”
The bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass and it fell seven votes short because some tea party Representatives showed they have liberal as well as conservative leanings and voted with Democrats against the bill, citing infringements of civil liberties these measures might cause.
Apparently those tea party civil libertarians and some Democrats weren't too concerned with privacy issues since all three provisions passed by simple majority this Monday, extending the measures to Dec. 8 of this year.
Meanwhile Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. has introduced legislation extending the measures to 2013 while improving the oversight of intelligence-gathering tools and phasing out national security letters enabling the FBI to obtain information without a judge's approval. Other Democrats have introduced similar measures, which the White House supports, and Attorney General Eric Holder told Leahy the Justice Department is implementing new oversight and civil liberties protection measures included in his legislation.
Republicans want to make the measures permanent.
These surveillance measures have likely helped prevent terrorist attacks from taking place in the U.S. since Sept. 11. We also admit there hasn't been any evidence they have infringed most Americans' civil liberties.
But how do we know? How do we know what information law enforcement and intelligence sources are accumulating and how they are viewing what we are looking at?
One of our staff members admitted they looked up the Muslim Brotherhood the other day in doing background work for a story. Another member said several years ago a Google search was done to see how easy it was to come up with Internet instructions on how to build a bomb – also research for a column.
How do we know law enforcement hasn't noticed these types of search by us and others, filed them and have added law-abiding citizens to some internal watch list? This should be of concern to all Americans, especially in light of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's statement last week that the terror level is the highest it's been since 2001 partly because of a concern over “homegrown” terrorists. Americans like the suburban Philadelphia woman who pleaded guilty to aiding terrorist with their holy war against the West – Jihad Jane.
If these cases increase, and there are signs, our intelligence agencies will also be looking inward at more and more Americans in their search to thwart acts of destruction. How long before this becomes us chasing our own shadows?
Sept. 11 changed things, revealing Americans are no longer isolated from the rest of the world. Surveillance measures in the Patriot Act have helped to keep us safe, but as recent events in the world have shown, there are other ways of defeating terrorism that don't infringe the privacy guaranteed in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
It's OK for now to continue these measures, but only with the tag-team work of increasing oversight and transparency in their implementation.
But permanent – no way! That's creation of Big Brother government – something Republicans and tea party representatives claim they don't want.
Reader Comments(0)