SINCE the very beginning, our nation has guaranteed its citizens certain liberties and personal freedoms. This is one of America's most alluring qualities and the reason why many people flee their homelands to come here in pursuit of happier lives. At a time when we should be cherishing our personal liberties the most, a time of national crisis and budding unity, President Bush would like to take some of our freedom away. This is unacceptable. We shouldn't be asked to hand over our freedom to the same government that claims to protect it. Congress should vote against this proposal and allow us to continue living our private lives.
The Bush Administration has proposed an anti-terrorism legislative package which asks for easier access to wiretap phones, conduct domestic surveillance, monitor cell phone and e-mail communications, and to detain immigrants indefinitely on a mere suspicion ("Don't Expect Quick Passage of Anti-Terrorism Package," The Washington Post, Sept. 25). If the bill passes, we would grant the government a great deal of power to pry into the lives of regular law abiding citizens and legal immigrants.
With the proposal, investigators could seize unopened voice mail and e-mail messages with a search warrant and not a court order. The current wiretapping law, which originated in 1968, calls for a court order for each telephone number and a description of the incriminating conversations that a particular individual is expected to have. As long as federal agents can show that the information is relevant to an investigation, they the new bill would enable them to obtain a court's permission to "tap and trace" - to get a record of all phone numbers called by the targeted individual ("Don't Expect Quick Passage of Anti-Terrorism Package"). The proposed anti-terrorism would simply make it much easier for investigators to spy on people they may find at all suspicious.
The question arises of how the FBI will determine which citizens are suspicious enough to warrant investigation. It all boils down to intuition. The FBI will spy on people it deems potentially dangerous. Investigators will inconvenience immigrant travelers that they think look suspicious. The government would have the right to jail any non-citizen deemed threatening to national security ("Senators Question an Anti-Terrorism Proposal," The Washington Post, Sept. 26). There would be no need to prove whether or not the detainee was being questioned or possibly subject to deportation on any other grounds.
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As the past three weeks have illustrated, in a time of national crisis and terror it is difficult not to become suspicious of those around you. Many Arab groups across the country have had to work hard to maintain friendly relations with other citizens. Americans can be a closed-minded bunch. This has been reflected in recent violence against innocent American citizens simply due to their ethnic origin. We cannot trust our fellow Americans working for the FBI to not jump to their own conclusions when determining who looks suspicious.
If a criminal is determined to plan and commit a crime, increased monitoring will not be a hindrance. The criminal probably would be aware of the increased security and would accommodate for it by coming up with a new way to carry out a crime. The more noticeable consequences of the legislation would affect each of us -- everyday citizens trying to maintain our privacy and personal liberties in spite of a nosy government. Whether or not we are aware that our communications are being surveyed, it is unacceptable that this breach of privacy could be taking place at all.
President Bush appeared briefly at the FBI headquarters in Washington in order to comment for the proposal. "Ours is a land that values the constitutional rights, of course," he said. "But we're at war ... and in order to win the war, we must make sure the law enforcement men and women have got the tools necessary, within the Constitution, to defeat the enemy" ("Senators Question Anti-Terrorism Proposal," The Washington Post, Sept. 26).
Defeating our enemy is one thing, but determining which citizens among us are to be classified as such is another, perhaps more difficult, task. No one can be objective enough to analyze all American residents and correctly identify the traitors among us without accidentally inconveniencing innocent lives along the way.
As the effects of the terrorist attacks remain evident, we cannot be asked to remain unsuspicious of those around us if the government is asking for permission to do just the opposite. The president is asking for freedom for the FBI to pry into the lives of people when it has the teeniest inkling of suspicion about them. The government will be granted much easier access to sift through pages of personal e-mails and phone call histories. Perhaps once it has learned every intimate detail of someone's day to day life, it will discover that -- oops -- it was wrong and that person is no longer a suspect. But it doesn't currently and shouldn't ever work that way.
At the commencement of World War I, Woodrow Wilson stated, "I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty." The government should leave our freedoms alone and pay attention to the more direct problems at hand. We should focus our funding and efforts toward the rehabilitation of our nation and toward any possible national defense that is forthcoming. The government should help the victims and defend the nation, not listen in on personal phone calls or detain people at the airport because they rubbed them the wrong way. America's leaders should focus on healing the wounds the nation already has received and not add to them by taking away their citizens' liberties.
(Alex Roosenburg is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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