And some folks STILL think there's a difference in these two criminal elements that rule the land
Renewal of two controversial Patriot Act provisions set to expire at the end of the year have been approved by House and Senate Committees over the past month, and appear headed for floor votes in both bodies. President Obama has endorsed extending the provisions.
The two provisions include the “records” rule and the “roving wiretaps” provision. The so-called “records” rule grants federal officials with a court order the power to force private parties such as businesses, hospitals, and libraries to hand over "any tangible thing" they believe has "relevance" to a terrorist investigation.
“Roving wiretaps” allow wiretapping multiple lines of communication without informing FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) courts which specific phone lines or communication media are being targeted.
President Obama has reversed himself on the issue, since he once opposed Patriot Act provisions as a fishing expedition by federal snoops in a December 15, 2005 Senate speech:
If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document — through library books they've read and phone calls they've made — this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.
Obama's 2005 speech was spot-on with regard to the facts. A recent Orange County Register editorial noted that “The evidence that any of these provisions has prevented or deterred a terrorist act is between slim and none — you can be sure that if they had been useful in helping to identify the handful of would-be terrorists who have been apprehended or prosecuted that government officials would have trumpeted the news.” And the Obama administration's own government confirms the Orange County Register's able summary. “According to the U.S. Attorney General's office,” ABCNews.com reported November 30, “there have been 220 such orders issued, but no major case to date has transpired because of information procured from them.”
Now that Obama is in power, what was once “just plain wrong” is suddenly just plain right.
Despite the fact that the records provision has never been used to prosecute any terrorists, the legislation has strong support among neo-conservative Republicans in Congress. "This critical legislation protects our national security, as well as our civil liberties, and the clock is ticking," claimed Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin.
The 180-degree political reversal that has coincided in precise time with the changeover of the party in power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by Obama and his supporters has led more honest leftists like Salon's Glenn Greenwald to question the sincerity of statements supporting strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution made during the Bush administration:
I could understand and accept a lot more easily this blithe acquiescence to Obama's record if it weren't for the fact that progressives and Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy — policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own. One can't help but wonder, at least in some cases, how genuine those objections were, as opposed to their just having been effective tools to discredit a Republican president for partisan and political gain.
Some leftist civil rights organizations such as the ACLU and People for the American Way have petitioned Congress not to renew these provisions of the Patriot Act. But most of the political left have simply rolled over now that “their man” is in charge.
Persons seeking limited government, particularly those seeking government under the limits of the U.S. Constitution, must oppose the tendency to secrecy as an essential stepping stone to tyranny. This explains why the Founding Fathers opposed giant intelligence establishments, even in the midst of Indian wars of terror that occasionally resulted in the deaths of thousands and the burning of entire towns. “Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services,” Elbridge Gerry noted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. But no one proposed then to emulate those establishments here in the United States. That's why James Madison, as one of his first acts as Speaker of the House in the first Congress, introduced the Bill of Rights with the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment contains an unequivocal prohibition against government searches without court warrants, probable cause and an oath. It also requires searches specifically describe what is being searched and what object is expected to be uncovered in the search.
Of course, the fact that no criminal trial has transpired as a result of the records provision of the Patriot Act is hardly a surprise. Anyone apprehended under such unconstitutional standards would never be brought to public trial. Giant intelligence establishments are generally loathe to reveal any secrets, no matter how trivial or how ancient. That's why President Obama recently agreed to postpone declassification of intelligence marked for the public domain years ago by both Presidents Clinton and Bush, despite the fact that some of the information goes all the way back to the Second World War.
Surveillance, torture and detention without jury trials have long gone hand-in-hand throughout all of human history. The Soviet KGB reputedly had listening devices everywhere they could, brought people for beatings and torture to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow and then “disappeared” its prisoners to the gulag. The Nazi Gestapo also had an all-pervasive intelligence network, engaged in torture, and sent millions of detainees to concentration camps without trial.
That's why constitutionalists have opposed the Patriot Act from the beginning. It is a stepping stone to a far more brutal form of government than Americans have historically known.
Thomas R. Eddlem, a freelance writer, served as the John Birch Society's director of research from 1991-2000.
