You're a freshman at a local college getting ready for a Friday evening date and you hear a knock at your door. You answer and there are two Secret Service agents asking to come in and look at a poster on your wall, which, they say, is anti-American. They don't have a warrant, but you let them look at the anti-death penalty poster through your doorway. They look at it, look at some of the others near it, one saying "Free Mumia," one with a picture of Jesse Jackson, etc. They ask you some personal questions and, after forty minutes, take their leave.
Does that scare you?
You're a docent at an avant-garde art museum. Two men knock at the door a bit before opening time, show credentials-one for the Secret Service, the other from the FBI-and walk right in. They say they want to see the exhibits because they heard there is anti-American activity going on at the museum. They aren't interested in hearing about the role of art in such a crucial time, nor in the artistic quality of the works, only in where the artists are from. They take notes and make negative comments about some of the works, one of which portrays George Bush, Sr. in the belly of a dancing devil. They ask about the number of people who view the art, and ask where you go to school.
Are you scared yet? You ought to be. Both these events really took place.
We're at war, says the state; these are extraordinary times. That's what they said after Pearl Harbor when they rounded up all Japanese Americans, citizens and non-citizens alike, and put them in camps. It hasn't gotten that bad yet, but the hysteria is there and those of totalitarian persuasion see an opportunity to push through the kinds of anti-civil libertarian measures they've been salivating for since the 1960s and the Vietnam War resistance. The USA Patriot Act, rushed through Congress by right wing theocrat John Ashcroft, President-Select Bush's Attorney General, with only one dissenting vote in the Senate (Russ Feingold), goes a long way in that direction. By passing that act, Congress has given Bush extraordinary war powers without ever declaring war, as Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution requires.
Since the September attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, journalists have been fired. Editorial cartoons have been pulled. Professors and teachers have been publicly criticized and ridiculed. It's not McCarthyism yet, but it doesn't have far to go.
The USA Patriot Act, HR 3162, (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) permits indefinite detention of immigrants and other non-citizens. But there is no requirement that indefinite detainees ever be given a trial or a hearing in which the government would have to prove that they are, in fact, terrorists.
The Bush administration is seeking to do away with the judiciary's role in protecting due process rights. The act allows for detention and deportation of people engaging in innocent associational activity. This affects non-citizens who provide assistance for lawful activities of a foreign or domestic group that the government claims is a terrorist organization, even if the group has never been designated as a terrorist organization. Under this new power, the Secretary of State could designate any group that has ever engaged in violent activity a "terrorist organization"-Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Earth First!, and on and on.
The act amends the definition of terrorist activity so that it now covers use of a "weapon or other dangerous device...to cause substantial damage to property," even if such damage created no danger of injury to persons. Under the definition, groups such as World Trade Organization protesters who engage in minor vandalism, or protesters at Vieques, Puerto Rico who damage a fence, or forest defenders who build a blockade, would be deemed terrorist organizations. Likewise, purely humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, foes of the Taliban and of Osama bin Laden, could be assistance to a terrorist organization.
The act limits judicial oversight of telephone and Internet surveillance by: 1) subjecting private Internet communications to a minimal standard of review, 2) permitting law enforcement to obtain what would be the equivalent of a "blank warrant" in the physical world, 3) authorizing intelligence wiretap orders that need not specify the place to be searched or require that only the target's conversations be eavesdropped upon and 4) allowing the FBI to use its "intelligence" authority to circumvent the judicial review of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment. The Patriot Act would apply not just to surveillance of people suspected of terrorist activity, but to investigation of other crimes as well.
The act allows law enforcement agencies to delay giving notice when they conduct a search. This means that the government could enter your house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupant was away, search through your property and take photographs, and in some cases seize physical property and electronic communications, and not tell you until later.
The Act puts the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans. It permits a vast array of information-gathering on US citizens from school records, financial transactions, Internet activity, and telephone conversations, as well as information gleaned from Grand Jury proceedings and criminal investigations to be shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) even if it pertains to American citizens. The information would be shared without a court order.
The act would extend the authority of the FBI to spy on Americans for "intelligence" purposes, as opposed to investigating criminal activity. It would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) so that the FBI could secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap primarily to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause of crime. Intelligence authority would suffice, even when the person whose home the FBI breaks into, or whose telephone it taps, is an American citizen.
The policies of the Bush regime threaten both our civil liberties and our national security. Bush has described in detail the "evil doers" who export their weapons of terror and how we must oppose them in the name of national security and defense of our "lifestyle." His description of rogue nations is an accurate reflection of America's foreign policy, which is the main threat to our nation's security. His attitude of entitlement, threats, demands, name-calling and saber-rattling, along with violations of Geneva Treaties, have put America at risk. North Korea's response to Bush's State of the Union address was that they felt it was tantamount to a declaration of war and that they were ready and capable of responding to whatever the US can dish out. China, India and Russia have since entered into agreements to create a joint weapons program. For weeks after President Bush used the term "axis of evil" in the State of the Union message, papers around the world continued to disparage the concept. European media suggest that the western alliance forged after September 11 has begun to crack due to the foreign policy of the American government, which is determined to pursue its private battle against evil without worrying too much about the cost to international peace. It seems that the world either hates us, fears us or both.
We are in what educators call a teachable moment. But, what will America learn? Hopefully, we will remember that freedom isn't cheap and it is our right and duty to stand up in defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We are not the President's minions. If in the name of the war on terrorism he tries to take our civil liberties, threaten our security, destroy our environment, and hand America to the corporations, it is our duty as Americans to resist. To quote Bill Moyers, "Disloyalty would not be in our dissent but in our subservience."
"If ye love wealth better that liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2002
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited