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Unfortunately, the debate over civil liberties is not likely to be advanced by Ashcroft's new speaking tour. The attorney general's much anticipated defense of the Patriot Act mostly stressed the least controversial aspects of the law — e.g. the law has simply "updated" the federal code to deal with digital and wireless technology. The thrust of the speech was that if policymakers take his critics seriously and revise or repeal portions of the Patriot Act, America will be insecure. The attorney general did not take a single question from the audience. Ashcroft is right that there has been too much politics and propaganda in the debate over security and civil liberties, but he is blowing his opportunity to elevate the discourse by skirting the tough issues. This is unfortunate because the threat posed by terrorism is not a short-term crisis, but a long-term security dilemma. The nagging questions about our recent lurch toward more surveillance and less privacy are not going to go away anytime soon. Here are a few questions that Ashcroft ought to be addressing on this speaking tour:
Reasonable people can and will disagree about the proper scope of the government's surveillance powers in the post-9/11 environment, but the stakes need to be clearly understood — and that cannot happen when government officials employ doublespeak, such as by using the terms "liberty" and "coercion" as if they were interchangeable. — Timothy Lynch is director of the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice and is the author of the Cato study, "Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism." |
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Patriot Act has been taking a pounding since it was enacted in the aftermath
of the September 11th terrorist attacks. It's a rare thing, after all,
to have 120 American cities and towns declaring themselves to be "civil
liberties safe zones" and for some localities to declare that their
police departments will not assist the feds when it comes to enforcing
the provisions of the Patriot Act. Attorney General John Ashcroft has
apparently concluded that he had better shore up public support for the
controversial law before the political situation gets even worse. This
week, Ashcroft launched a speaking tour to tout the Patriot Act as an
"essential" weapon in America's war against terrorists.
Mr. Ashcroft, you say that Congress passed the Patriot Act by an "overwhelming
margin," but do you think the vote would have been different if legislators
had known about your plans to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely and
to prosecute others in military tribunals, instead of the civilian courts?
You may recall that you announced those initiatives once the debate over
the necessity of the Patriot proposal was over and the law was officially
enacted.
