Officials Rise Up to Defy The Patriot Act
Apr 22 2003
If you are not yet familiar
with The Patriot
Act, I would suggest that you do a little background reading and consider
its repercussions (1,2,3,4).
If its provisions are not alarming, I would then suggest that you do some more
reading: Simply pick from any world history text book and flip to any chapter.
If you still aren’t alarmed, you have just qualified for a presidential
cabinet position.
What is most disturbing about
this bill, is the ludicrous assumptions about the (one would hope unique) characteristics
of those who wish to harm citizens of the United States that would logically
make the damn thing ineffective anyway. Michael Woods, the FBI’s chief
lawyer in the national security law unit, defended the new authority to track
Internet access in libraries by citing the unproven hypothesis that terrorists
know how to use anonymous e-mail accounts and went on to proclaim that “It’s
part of their trade-craft”. Of course, it is little surprise that no one
has any interest in confirming that terrorists use email to communicate, since
a 2001 Department of Commerce study [A
Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet] showed
that over 46% of Americans use email. I would also propose that they breathe
and quite possibly get dressed in the morning; perhaps the executive branch
should also be granted the authority to monitor air consumption and clothing
trends. I skew this, but the point is that there was no evidence to show (and
the conclusion reached does not reasonably follow) that online privacy rights
stood in the way of terrorist-related investigations. And remember, the crux
of the assault on liberty is not that this information was previously inaccessible
to the government; it is that this information is now made available to the
executive branch (read federal law enforcement) without the consideration of
the judicial branch. And for those who currently feel compelled to spout off
the usual crap about “having nothing to hide”, I suggest you do
some additional reading: Jeremy Bentham The Panopticon and Michel Foucault Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. In short, the fear of being watched even
while you are “doing nothing wrong” is pretty much a polar opposite to freedom.
Fear in the Panopticon is not of being found guilty of a crime you knowingly
committed, but of having your actions surreptitiously interpreted; it is a tool
to psychologically encourage extreme obedience (and is, of course, closely related
to the effects of religious fear).
In addition to this bill, which
was railroaded through congress during the post September 11th panic, there
is a draft of the proposed sequel circulating the Internet: Domestic
Security Enhancement Act of 2003. In keeping up current trends, this bill
makes further assaults on civil liberties, including the power of the executive
branch to “expatriate” a citizen if he/she “becomes a member
of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated
as a ‘terrorist organization,’ if that group is engaged in hostilities
against the United States.” That sounds innocent enough, until you remember
that 1) the United States has often given broad meaning to the term “terrorist
organization” which has at times included environmental organizations
and 2) the term “terrorist activity” that is used to define those
organizations only requires that organization “to gather information on
potential targets for terrorist activity” to receive the special stigma.
And, yes, there is a very vague circular reference in there that would imply
that it is illegal to gather information about gathering information to commit
other terrorist activities. To be fair on point 1, there is an official list
of terrorist organizations maintained and approved by the Secretary of State
that currently includes 36 foreign organizations. We do, however, place a great
deal of trust into the administrator of that list and I’m not terribly
comfortable with that having now read the criteria for inclusion. [See: Foreign
Terrorist Organizations]
Arg, I do hate politics.