- With Election Day fast approaching, it was only a matter
of time before the usual congressional shenanigans that typically punctuate
the political season.
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- This time, politicians appear to have seized on what
could be called the Patriot Act strategy, drafting antiterrorism
legislation
in secret and then ramming it through the Senate and House of
Representatives
with minimal debate. Then it's back to the home districts to boast how
they protected voters from the bad guys.
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- The vehicles chosen for this strategy are two bills
described
as being inspired by the 9/11 Commission's report, a politically potent
text that's become a best-selling book. The Senate and House have approved
their own versions of the legislation, and negotiators are now meeting
privately to decide on the final draft.
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- Early indications are not promising. While portions of
the massive legislation are no doubt praiseworthy, other important
sections--especially
those envisioning stuffing more information into government
databases--deserve
special scrutiny from privacy hawks.
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- Because the House version is nearly three times as long,
its authors had more room to promote private agendas.
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- One section anticipates storing the "lifetime travel
history of each foreign national or United States citizen" into a
database for the convenience of government officials. It mentions
passports,
but there's nothing that would preclude recording the details of trips
that Americans take inside the United States.
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- President Bush would be required to create a "secure
information sharing" network to exchange data among law enforcement,
military and spy agencies. Aside from a bland assurance that "civil
liberties" will be protected, there are zero details on what databases
will be vacuumed in or what oversight will take place.
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- A second network would be created by the first person
to get the new job of national intelligence director. That network must
"provide immediate access to information in databases of federal law
enforcement agencies and the intelligence community that is necessary to
identify terrorists."
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- It hardly needs to be said that snaring terrorists is
what our government should be doing. But it's not clear that the House
bill is a step in the right direction.
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- Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for
Democracy
and Technology, hopes that the aides negotiating the final bill end up
adopting the Senate language instead. It also would create an
information-sharing
network--while requiring that Congress receive semiannual reports on how
the network is being used.
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- "There are dozens if not hundreds of government
programs under way to do just that (already)," Dempsey warns.
"They
are fragmented; they are overlapping. They are occurring outside of any
framework of oversight."
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- Still, the Senate bill is no prize. A last-minute
amendment
added by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would require the Department of
Homeland
Security to create an "integrated screening system" inside the
United States.
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- McCain envisions erecting physical checkpoints, dubbed
"screening points," near subways, airports, bus stations, train
stations, federal buildings, telephone companies, Internet hubs and any
other "critical infrastructure" facility deemed vulnerable to
terrorist attacks. Secretary Tom Ridge would appear to be authorized to
issue new federal IDs--with biometric identifiers--that Americans could
be required to show at checkpoints.
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- Both the House and Senate bills coerce state governments
into creating what critics are calling a national ID card. Under the
proposals,
federal agencies will accept only licenses and state ID cards that comply
with specific to-be-established standards--a requirement that would affect
anyone who wants to get a U.S. passport, obtain Social Security benefits,
or even wander into a federal courthouse.
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- That's why Jim Harper, director of information policy
studies at the Cato Institute, is no fan of either bill. "They say
that if we just put appropriate rules and restrictions in place, everything
will be fine," Harper said. "But of course those rules and
restrictions
will drop away over the years or if there are new terrorist attacks. They
say, 'Of course lion-taming is safe. They're our friends.' But then one
day the lion grabs you by the neck and drags you off the
stage."
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- A few other courageous Washingtonians have raised similar
concerns. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, warned last week that the House bill
"will not make America safer (but will definitely) make us less
free."
And 25 former senior officials from the FBI, CIA and military have sent
a letter to Congress indicating that the 9/11 Commission's recommendations
are flawed because the report whitewashed what went wrong on Sept. 11,
2001.
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- Unfortunately, with only 15 days left before the
election,
politicians will be tempted to place expedience over sober analysis of
what's permitted by the U.S. Constitution. That's what happened in October
2001 with the mad scramble to enact the Patriot Act, and history is about
to repeat itself.
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