| Big Brother By Achal Mehra
Don’t fly the flag too high this Independence
Day.
This
July 4 Americans feel particularly patriotic, opinion
polls tell us. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Independence
Day has assumed special meaning.
In truth we should be feeling downright miserable this
Independence Day. The liberty bell has lost its sheen,
thanks to the draconian laws passed in the aftermath
of the terrorist attacks.
The FBI has acquired broad powers to snoop on the library
records and bookstore receipts of individuals it suspects
of links to terrorists. It does not have to meet the
constitutional standards of “probably cause” to begin
monitoring individuals; having reason to suspect an
individual is enough.
New surveillance guidelines issued by the attorney general
authorize the FBI to monitor Internet sites, telephone
conversations, libraries, churches and political organizations.
Be careful what you type into that google search engine.
Even the CIA has been let loose to engage in domestic
spying.
In short order, all the constraints imposed upon the
FBI and the CIA in response to their excesses and abuses
of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, have been lifted in the
relentless fight against terrorism. Much of this legislation,
cynically titled the USA Patriot Act, was railroaded
through Congress within six weeks of the terrorist attacks
of that fateful September morning. As a result, the
bill did not secure the scrutiny such sweeping legislation
demands and all Americans are now paying a heavy price.
To this day, hundreds of alien detainees languish in
jails and detention centers without access to their
families or attorneys. In the vast majority of cases
they have been rounded up on the most trivial immigration
violation and in some cases they have not been charged
with any crime at all. Incredibly, the attorney general
has arrogated to himself the right to monitor their
conversations with attorneys, if they were fortunate
enough to be permitted one.
The INS has implemented an elaborate monitoring system
to track foreign students, requiring American colleges
and universities to report to it whether foreign students
are taking scheduled programs and it is particularly
interested in those signed up for chemistry or nuclear
physics courses, ostensibly because they could acquire
information potentially useful to terrorists. If you
are a foreign student in the United States, you better
watch out if you have any aptitude for science! Be very
mindful of the electives you take.
The justice department has not been content to pursue
suspicious foreigners. The encroachment of government
powers into the constitutionally protected space of
individuals has now gone past aliens. Increasingly,
and inevitably, it is turning on suspicious U.S. citizens,
brown ones in particular. The most pernicious aspect
of these draconian laws is that the government spying
apparatus is shrouded in such secrecy that it is impossible
to even gauge the magnitude of its surveillance of citizens.
The law authorizing the FBI to snoop into library records,
for instance, makes it a criminal offence for librarians
to reveal any details about their contacts with the
FBI.
As Chris Finan, director of the American Booksellers
for Free Expression, says, “There is so much secrecy
that we can’t even tell what the government is doing,
or how much it’s doing it.”
The relentless assault on civil liberties by the Bush
administration undermines the very foundations of America’s
greatest gift to the world: its unmatched traditions
of individual liberty. We should not hoist the flag
too high this July 4th for fear that it catches the
eye of Big Brother.
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