Contents
The War on Terror
In 2001 our country was attacked by Al-Qaeda. Our Pentagon and the World Trade Center were attacked by these terrorists. Now we have a prison in Cuba at Guantanamo, where people of all nationalities are held as prisoners of war. And we deny them the basic rights that we as Americans supposedly have. Even American citizens have been imprisoned for years, no trial, no habeas corpus, no rights, because our government, specifically the executive branch, has made the decision as to how these people are to be treated. Even a trip on an airplane requires us to submit to search and seizure of nail clippers, bottled water and face cream. All this is in the name of security, not in the name of civil rights.
Post-9/11 Constitutional Violations to Our First Amendment Rights Organizations like NCAC, the Jefferson Center, FEN and others courageously defend our First Amendment rights especially under attack post-September 11, 2001. Six weeks later, the USA Patriot Act began assaulting those rights (and Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment ones too) all of which were well eroded already.
Most disturbing in the law is Section 215 under which federal investigators may seek a search warrant relating to an ongoing terrorism or intelligence investigation without meeting probable cause standards for it. It can then be used for intrusive unconstitutional searches without our knowledge for "any tangible things" about our speech-related activities in libraries, bookstores, banks and other repositories of our financial records, places of worship, medical provider records, internet use records, floppy disks, computer hard drives and other documents or places with records or information on our speech-related activities. Section 505 of the Patriot Act is about as intrusive as Section 215 as it authorizes administrative subpoena targeting of bank and other financial records, credit reports, telephone and e-mail logs and more by use of a National Security Letter (NSL). Again, no probable cause standard is needed, and those receiving NSLs are gagged from disclosing its issuance so those targeted never know. Unlike Section 215, however, NSLs require no judicial oversight, only that they relate, without corroborating evidence, to an ongoing terrorism investigation on federal investigators' say alone.
A scant two decades longer than Orwell imagined, high tech surveillance makes it possible for modern-day thought control police to watch and know our activities, control our lives, and, if they wish, make us believe and accept as true "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, (and) Ignorance is Strength" under an omnipotent state using its will to subvert ours. Where there's a "signing statement," there's a way to do it on top of complicit congressional pre and post-9/11 legislation passed to make it simple enough already.
George Bush is a serial abuser of the presidential practice of attaching "signing statements" to laws passed although nothing in the Constitution allows it. He's done it around 800 times, more than all past presidents combined, using his usurped "Unitary Executive" power to claim the law is what he says it is. He issued one "statement" shortly after 9/11 authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop, for the first time ever, without legally required Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants on international phone and e-mail communications originating from or received within the US. Then following the passage of the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act of 2006, he issued another "signing statement" giving himself broad authority to order opening US citizens' mail without a warrant. In so doing, he violated US law and regulations including FISA permitting warrantless surveillance only for foreign intelligence collection between "foreign powers" for up to one year. With a warrant, FISA courts nearly always approve requests allowing surveillance and physical searches of US citizens' "premises, information, material, or property used exclusively by" a foreign power or by an individual thought to be an "agent of a foreign power."
Never satisfied, the Bush administration now wants expanded warrantless spying authority within and outside the country requesting Congress amend the FISA law legalizing what it's already doing anyway, law or no law. On May 2, director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee claiming the president may legally authorize warrantless surveillance (under the Constitution's Article II making him commander-in-chief) but wants FISA amended so it can do it without challenge it'll ignore anyway. It also wants to fix and modernize what McConnell calls "communication gaps" in intelligence gathering including "monitoring" the internet, cell phones and other new technology as well as "transit traffic" international phone calls and emails.
Amendments requested would further erode laws protecting against illegal searches and seizures and our First Amendment rights connected to them. They would also allow surveillance of any non-citizens in the country "reasonably expected to possess, control, transmit, or receive foreign intelligence information while such a person is in the United States," even if they're not a target of an investigation. In addition the administration wants legal cover to spy on anyone it claims engages in activities related to buying or developing WMDs, even with no evidence to prove it. Bottom line: the Bush administration wants Congress to give it near limitless authority to spy on anyone in any way in the name of national security, and sadly, rhetoric aside, this complicit Congress will likely give in, further eroding what little freedom we still have.