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Act threatens personal freedom

After passage of the USA Patriot Act by Congress on Oct. 24, 2001, many Americans felt the fear of diminishing civil liberties in response to President George W. Bush’s crusade against terrorism. Now, his administration has drafted the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, which further infringes upon Americans’ civil liberties in the name of national security.

If enacted as written, the first effects will be felt in the realm of intelligence and information.

In 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act established a legal entity, separate from original law enforcement surveillance, that was designed to effectively gather foreign intelligence.

Until the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, the information collected by the FISA was not open to use in legal proceedings unless signed off by the Attorney General.

Now, it is proposed that the Attorney General not be needed to sign off for information to be legally used in prosecution of suspected terrorists. Instead, anyone in the Attorney General’s office can authorize such usage.

This gives more power to federal investigators and prosecutors during the trials of suspected terrorists, thus making a fair trial much less accessible for the defendant.

Another portion of the Act will be to revoke certain pieces of the Freedom of Information Act of 1967. The Freedom of Information Act was modified and amended in 1975 and 1996. This Act provides for the release of records compiled in the computer database of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Intelligence to the public.

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act will suspend this right to families or friends of detained suspected terrorists, causing the connected individuals to be unable to know the reason behind such detention.

The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution states that every detained individual must be informed of the “nature and cause” of his or her accusation or immediately released, also known as the writ of habeas corpus. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act dangerously dances around this constitutional right when it suspends such information to everyone but the accused.

It is not only the power of information suppression that is being expanded by the Act. The Bush Administration has made it possible to revoke the U.S. citizenship of individuals who have been accused of becoming a “member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated as a ‘terrorist organization.'”

The real danger in this proposal comes with the definition of “terrorist” activity. Legally, it is non-existent, giving government officials wide latitude to designate anyone a “terrorist” or “terrorist sympathizer.”

The responsibility is left up to Attorney General John Ashcroft alone, and if Ashcroft proclaims a group’s activities to be of a terrorist nature, then the individual connected with that group can possibly be expatriated.

This designation to one individual in the U.S. Government leaves the doors of corruption wide open.

A supremely extreme, albeit unlikely, example lies in tradition of Islam. It is the belief of some Islamic Fundamentalist groups, such as Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, that part of the Muslim faith is to wage a holy war on all infidels. Although this belief is only practiced by a tiny percentage of the world’s Muslim population, if Ashcroft deems the Islamic faith to be an organization that supports terrorism, then all American Muslims, totaled at more than 7 million and growing in the United States as of the 2000 census, could possibly be expatriated, or stripped of their American citizenship, due to their support of their religion.

Every American’s right to privacy is also in danger of becoming diminished if the Act passes. The Act gives the power to collect “DNA samples, fingerprints, or other identification information” at any time from suspected terrorists to the Attorney General, and “any other official or agency designated by the Attorney General,” the probation officers of suspected terrorists that have been released on probation, and the Secretary of Defense, and “any other official or agency within the Department of Defense designated by the Secretary.”

The Act also proclaims that the Attorney General may enlist any “Federal Agencies, units of State or local governments, or private entities to assist in the collection, analysis, storage, or maintenance” of the collected information.

The vagueness of the descriptions of “other identification information,” when coupled with the ability of the Attorney General and the Secretary of State to delegate the power to collect wherever they see necessary, this provision of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act essentially provides government officials with limitless powers to violate the privacy of suspected terrorists. These suspected terrorists are not yet guilty. They remain innocent until proven guilty under the Constitution, and this Act denies them their right to privacy without such consideration, even before any charges are filed against them.

If this Act passes, it is another step by the Bush Administration to impede upon civil liberties in the name of national security. National security is a concern. Presently, Americans do face the threat of being victims of terrorist actions, and it is our government’s job to protect us from such dangers. But where do we draw the line? What civil liberties are we willing to give up to achieve national security?

This Act takes it too far. The concentration of power in the Domestic Security Enhancement Act is far too centralized to be deemed anything close to democratic.

Through vague definitions and nearly limitless power delegation, in the proposed act Attorney General John Ashcroft has been given a green light to rid the United States of terrorism basically any way he sees fit. The responsibility to protect the citizens of a country that boasts a population of more than 290 million and growing at about one person every 13 seconds lies mainly in the hands of one man. Corruption is aching to rear its ugly head. The civil liberties of Americans are in jeopardy. How much further will the Bush administration attempt to go?

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Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Campus Times Editorial Board.

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