This Week's Attitude
Rampant Domestic Spying Weakens Our Freedoms
By Neil S. Friedman

Escalated domestic spying became a critical government priority in the wake of the terrorist attacks six years ago. But, in a few instances, the government went beyond legal boundaries in its objective to learn about terrorist activity, using unauthorized power and secrecy as a justification to ensure public safety.

Last week a Manhattan federal judge ruled unconstitutional the controversial provision of the Patriot Act that allowed the FBI to issue secret subpoenas to Internet service providers and other communications companies. He ordered the nation's top law enforcement agency to cease, citing it as a violation of the First Amendment.

The judge also found that the gag rule provision for those who refuse to comply with National Security Letters requesting certain data or challenge the secrecy provision was insufficient and violated the constitutional separation of powers, noting it "allows the government to determine the legality of its own actions."

After 9/11, there were sufficient grounds to tighten security that had become lax since the end of the Cold War more than a decade earlier and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. However, the Bush Administration seized the occasion to essentially ditch the Constitution - particularly the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure by government officials - and impose its own strategy while most politicians from both major parties willingly turned a blind eye to the devious maneuvering.

All this was set in motion after 9/11 when most Americans recovered from the shock and were hell bent on knee-jerk revenge for the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC. But none were more for retaliation - specifically against Iraq - than President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Consequently, they formulated a hasty strategy to attack a nation believed to be an easy mark, while seeking means to unlawfully listen in and intercept communications that were overlooked before the devastation of 9/11.

Congress fittingly amended the nation's surveillance act, which had become outdated with the many technological upgrades created since it was enacted 25 years earlier. But there were still rules about mandatory court-approved warrants for most surveillance, which the Attorney General, clearly acting with White House consent, obviously felt could be superseded in the interest of national security.

Portions of the renewed Patriot Act allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies, including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the records without court authorization, but also to forbid those companies from informing customers or anyone else what they had done. Under the law, enacted last year, the ability of the courts to review challenges to the ban on disclosures was severely limited.

Last week's judicial ruling is a clear message to Congress to restrict the government from overstepping its Constitutional and legal limits.

The Attorney General is selected by the president and approved by Congress, but he/she is supposed to be non-partisan and act in the best interests of the American people. During the Bush White House years, more often than not, the AG has acted more like the president's personal lawyer - and both seemed to have little knowledge or concern for Constitutional law.

While some Americans readily consent when the government breaches established law, sustaining advocates who claim it is vital in order to maintain our security, they fail to comprehend that by doing so the government infringes on the very liberties it is defending and protecting.

Combating terrorism should not be an excuse for rampant domestic spying. It may, however, from time to time be essential, but, unlike what has occurred in the last six years, it should never defy or undercut the fundamental principles of a free society. When it does, we are no better than the enemies we seek to eliminate.