perfidy

I've been reading more and more about civil liberties, and the proposed revisions to the USA-PATRIOT act that are apparently forthcoming soon. It's chilling stuff. 

A story is out today that that a senior Intel engineer has been detained without being charged for giving money to an Islamic charity. The FBI claims that the charity in question has ties to Al Qaeda, but upon investigation, The Register has found that those connections are mostly imaginary. The best they can do is demonstrate that one time, a member of Al Qaeda gave money to the same, prominent, charity-- not the other way around. 

Think about that. A real guy, a computer nerd regular smart-guy Joe, detained indefinitely, without due process, for giving money to a charity that a branch of the government decided in retrospect may be loosely associated with terrorism. I don't like the implications of that one goddamn bit. 

Anyway, on to USA-Patriot II. Matt Welch has an update today on Alternet, and Nat Henthoff had a cutting analysis in the Village Voice at the end of February. Thanks to the Center for Public Integrity I have my own copy of the bill to read. Here's what I found. Among other fun pursuits, the US government would be given the power to:

• revoke one's citizenship --" the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct"
• hold any person indefinitely in secret, without notifying a soul
• make it a crime to tell anyone about subpoenas served under Patriot II
• start a national DNA database of arrestees, as long as they are labelled as potential terrorist conspirators of any kind, or as long as the DNA "may assist in the investigation and identification of terrorists and the prevention of terrorism"
• specifically limit the recourse of private citizens, and the recourse of courts acting on their behalf who have been wrongly detained or investigated
• wiretap anyone for fifteen days, without a warrant, provided that at some point in the recent past that Congress has approved military action or a national emergency has been called
• grant immunity to businesses who report on employees' activities, even if the tips are false
• revoke habeas corpus for permanent resident aliens
• and spy on US citizens on behalf of other countries.

The document also contains language that would make the "sunset" provisions in the original PATRIOT act -- this is, certain draconian measures set to expire in five years -- permanent. There's also a bunch of more minor nibbles at liberty -- the government could look at your credit report at will (secretly), would operate under less judicial control when wiretapping citizens, gets expanded FISA powers, etc., etc., etc. 

As I've said before, it's a bad thing when the residents of a free nation begin fearing their government as I begin to fear mine. The worst part about it is the powerlessness I feel. What can I do? Write my congressmen? Write John Kerry?? I wouldn't trust John Kerry to save orphans from drowning, if he could find a political downside!! 

I'm going to do write them, but whoopdiddleydoo. I'm a broke secretary who doesn't have the scratch to donate to campaigns. Therefore, I don't count so much. Sure, I'll vote against anybody who supports the act, but by that time, the law will be in place and since it's all secret police without due process, it will be very, very hard for someone to sue the government for acting outside the bounds of the Constitution. Bye bye, checks and balances! These could be dark times indeed, if the Justice department uses the war as cover to ram through measures such as these. If I may be totally cynical for a moment, this is one of the reasons I thank God that terrorists have not been able to hit us again as they hit us two years ago. 

And you don't think any of this could happen to you? Did you ever give money to Irish causes? How about PETA, ELF, or a Right-To-Life cause? Or to an Israeli relief charity? A Palestinian relief charity? Your local mosque? Good luck to you then. I understand full well that I'm looking at the situation and seeing the worst possible outcome. But, for some reason, I tend to do that when it's civil liberties at stake. Must be the idealist in me. I better get to work on repressing that.