Government officials and commentators in the big-business press pose this issue as "fighting terrorism" and the need to choose between "security" against liberty. They seek to convince working people that their hard-fought struggles for rights over decades, including those incorporated in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. constitution, must now be significantly altered in order to give greater powers to various police agencies.

For example, a September 15 poll on the home page of the Internet provider Compuserve posed the question like this: "Which freedoms would you be willing to compromise to wipe out terrorism?" The choices were, "Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Travel, Right of Privacy, All of the Above, [and] None of the Above."

"Everything is under review," stated Secretary of State Colin Powell. This includes "how the CIA does its work, how the FBI and Justice Department does its work, are there laws that need to be changed and new laws brought into effect."

This campaign to roll back democratic rights is being conducted with bipartisan support in the halls of Congress. "We're in a new world where we have to rebalance freedom and security," stated House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt. "We're not going to have all the openness and freedom we have had." Senate Minority Leader, Republican Trent Lott, sounded a similar theme. "When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently," he stated. "We've been having an academic discussion and holding our breath in this area for several years. We can't do that anymore."

Among the new restrictions are:

*The Bush administration announced September 18 a major expansion of its power to detain immigrants, saying that legal immigrants can be held indefinitely during a "national emergency." In addition, a bill being rushed through Congress would give the Justice Department the ability to waive a new 48-hour deadline--up from the previous 24 hours--to decide whether or not to release a jailed immigrant "in the event of emergency or other extraordinary circumstance." The Justice Department could hold the person for "an additional reasonable period of time" without charges. Armed with these new powers, the Justice Department said it will not release 75 immigrants currently being held, allegedly in connection with the September 11 attacks.

In addition, a draft bill has been introduced in Congress that would give the Justice Department new authority to arrest immigrants suspected of "terrorism," accelerate the process of deporting them, and curtail court appeals. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which has been on the books since 1996, already authorizes the deportation of noncitizens without judicial review or appeal.

According to a Daily News report, the Justice Department has given U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, the leading federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York based in Manhattan, "extraordinary powers to proceed in secrecy against anyone implicated" in the attack. Search warrants and records will be sealed and federal authorities "no longer will disclose when arrests are made or when material witnesses are taken into custody," the Daily News reports a Justice Department spokesperson saying.

*Two days after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Senate hastily added an amendment to a spending bill making it easier for cop agencies to track individuals' communications on the Internet, without having to obtain multiple search warrants. The FBI is also pursuing its plan to pressure internet providers to allow them to hook up the Carnivore system, which monitors all electronic communications on their networks.  
 
Expansion of wiretapping
*Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the Justice Department is seeking to broaden its authority under a 1978 law to allow the department to seek authority to eavesdrop on any phone used by a person targeted for surveillance, rather than getting wiretap orders for each individual telephone number. The current law on the books established a secret federal court that hears government requests to wiretap specific lines.

For the FBI to more effectively "randomly monitor telephone communications within the United States," noted the Times, it will need to call on the services of the National Security Agency, which "is limited by law and executive order in monitoring communications within the United States." These rules were established in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "There are now bound to be efforts to rewrite that law to give the NSA greater latitude," stated the newspaper.

*The State Senate in New York passed a new law September 17 significantly expanding the use of wiretapping surveillance by state cop agencies. For the first time, the law establishes a felony offense of "terrorism". Funding a group named terrorist will also be a felony. It allows the death penalty for anyone who commits murder while carrying out an act deemed terrorist. The 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act defines terrorism as "any violent act or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States," giving the government wide latitude in going after union members on a picket line or against demonstrations the cops allege to have blocked public access.

*Federal authorities have also made crossing the border into the United States an onerous affair. By requiring intrusive inspections of practically every vehicle and checking every bag they deem suspicious, they have created a gridlock of cars and trucks seeking to cross along the 2,000-mile U.S. Mexico border.

*The U.S. government has expanded security checks at federal buildings and national monuments. They have also closed more than 50 embassies around the world.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has imposed tough new regulations at commercial airports, resulting in hours of delays for many seeking to catch a flight. The FAA has agreed to put armed marshals on many flights. The first group would be drawn from federal police agencies, with more to be eventually hired.

*Some 5,000 members of the New York National Guard have been patrolling the streets of Manhattan together with tens of thousands of New York police. As workers returned to their jobs in Lower Manhattan around the Wall Street area September 17, they were required to produce identification to enter the area and had their packages and bags searched.

*In the days following the attack on the World Trade Center, police in New York set up checkpoints on the bridges into Manhattan. A New York Times column titled "Last Week, Profiling was Wrong," pointed out, "Some drivers said that officers seemed to single out drivers who appeared to Arabs and Muslims." At Kennedy International Airport on September 13, the article quotes one passenger as saying, "Anyone with dark skin or who spoke with an accent was taken aside and searched. And then they went to any male with too much facial hair."

*Federal and local police have conducted a growing number of raids of homes and offices, as well as stopping individuals riding in cars or vans. The New Jersey Star-Ledger, for example, lists 12 such raids conducted in 11 different cities in that state from September 11–16. Reporting on one such raid in East Rutherford September 11, under the title "FBI agents search an urban Moving System van," the paper stated, "Police stopped the van, containing five men, after receiving a report they had been videotaping and celebrating the disaster on the Hudson County waterfront. The men, who identified themselves as Israeli citizens, have since been released, according to a law enforcement source."

In San Diego harbor, officials have boarded and searched more than 300 vessels in the week since September 11.  
 
Press censorship
*According to a CNN report, "America's 'new war' against terrorism will be fought with unprecedented secrecy, including heavy press restrictions not seen for years." The U.S. Defense Department has stopped posting on the Internet the general location of U.S. warships. In addition, "The Pentagon currently has no plans to allow reporters to deploy with troops, or report from warships, practices routinely carried out in the 1991 Persian Gulf War," noted CNN.

*Among the regulations the administration is seeking to revise, Secretary of State Powell said, is a 1976 executive order issued by President Gerald Ford that bans U.S. personnel from engaging in assassinations. The order was issued in the wake of hearings before the U.S. Congress that exposed the numerous assassination plots undertaken by the CIA over the years.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home