Civil Liberties

Our founding fathers were quite aware of the dangers of giving the government excessive power. They chose a framework that balanced the power and authority of a branch of government by having two others that would serve to keep any other branch within appropriate limits. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to further ensure individual liberties.

The framers of the Constitution were quite aware that limiting the power of government can also be a risk. Powerful governments might be powerful enough to keep the citizenry safe, but, as Benjamin Franklin once said, “anyone who gives up their liberty for safety ends up losing both.”

The last eight years have seen a tremendous erosion of civil liberties and a growing imbalance of constitutional power. Due to the support of a Republican Congress which followed the President’s policies without reflection or consideration of the longer term affects, the power of Congress to keep governmental authority within appropriate limits has been severely weakened.

Not only has the proportion of the power of government shifted dangerously to the President and the Federal Government, but individual rights of privacy and basic legal rights have been severely limited. As a student of law, I know that laws should be written, not only for the people for whom they will first apply, but also for strangers who will later interpret the laws as they are written and use them for their own purposes. We presently have given the government vast and unprecedented power to intrude into our privacy in significant ways, done to limit the threat of terrorism. Congress has given our government the ability to use this power without the judicial oversight that previously has been necessary. The federal government may now, if it believes it necessary to “fight terrorism,” find out what we’ve said in our emails, who we’ve talked to on the telephone, what we’ve purchased on our Visa cards, and even what books we’ve checked out from the library. In situations in which the government perceives a terrorist threat, there is not even the need to pause and convince a Court that such intrusion is necessary. Although that power may be used today to fight terrorism, in the future it may be used to merely fight dissent.

Those who are arrested under the Patriot Act lose the guarantee of liberties and rights that have been the hallmark of our constitution. They may not be able to consult with an attorney in private. They may be detained at the government’s initiative and for the length of time the government wishes, with little recourse available to the Courts. We may even torture prisoners. Many people believe that these are understandable and necessary practices, since we need to fight terrorism and need to have the investigative capacity to do so effectively. Others are quite concerned that it is the government itself that may in the future pose a threat and are worried about the potential future misuse of this immense governmental power without the checks and balances of oversight from the judicial system.

There are currently even efforts to have a “National ID” system with each of us assigned a number not only available to the federal government, but a number necessary to fly on airplanes, open a bank account, conduct many financial transactions, and, basically, necessary to function in modern America. As with the Patriot Act, the capacity to easily monitor our movements and activities is a frightening amount of power to give to any government. According to a recently released policy of Homeland Security, border guards can now even seize the computers or reading materials of anyone passing over the borders into the U.S., including American citizens, without the need to explain why they are doing so, justify their decision to any judicial body, or even state when this property will be returned to its owner.

History shows us that power once given to a government is seldom, if ever, reclaimed. We must pay attention to the risks in these proposals as it becomes time to make decisions about the continuation of the so called “Patriot Act”, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and whether or not laws should apply to telecommunication companies that illegally provide information about our phone calls to the government. Our fears about our safety need to be balanced with the concern about government misuse of the powers that we’ve given them.

Adlai Stevenson once ran for President, and made the comment that “Democracy is where it’s safe to be unpopular.” Not only is democracy a situation where it’s safe to be unpopular, democracy demands that sometimes people be unpopular so that dissenting voices, new solutions to problems, and meaningful disagreements can be aired and discussed and better decisions reached. The more power we give to government, the more government may use that power over us in ways to reduce dissent and reduce our freedom.

It is my view that these policies have gone too far, and have created a greater danger than would be caused by the brief delays necessary to insure due process of justice in seeking personal information. I believe that giving our government the power to torture people is wrong. As such, I am opposed to measures found in parts of the Patriot Act and parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that remove constitutional safeguards to privacy and individual liberty. We should always remember that if we give government the power to do it to “them,” we’ve also given the power to government to do it to “us.”