Uses and Abuses
One of the many reasons I oppose the Patriot Act is that based on the history of our gummint and our grand experiment with democracy is that just as people use legislation and institutions, so do they abuse them. A case in example is this article, which outlines some of the charges being made against the FBI and its use of the Patriot Act.
While there certainly needs to be some level of awareness about domestic activities, we've had quite a few instances in recent history where the gummint has subverted laws and regulations to shadier purposes. During the 1950s, there was McCarthyism, where Senator Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and other minions worked to discredit and in essence destroy the lives of hundreds of people. Even before that, you had the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), once known as the Dies Committee. While HUAC was initially set up to investigate both left and right-wing extremists, thanks to Southern sympathizers on the committee groups such as the KKK were conveniently ignored and by the 1950s, the McCarthy era saw HUAC searching high and low for Communists. Even after McCarthy was censured, HUAC continued to operate until the 1970s. It really wouldn't surprise me if, in today's climate, we saw a resurgence of such a thing as HUAC.
The 1970s also saw the end of COINTELPRO, thanks to the Church Committee (named for its chair, Senator Frank Church of Idaho; formally known as the Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). COINTELPRO was an acronym for COunter-INTELigence PROgram, an arm of the FBI. It was started in the 50's as a means to covertly track, intimidate, and compromise groups that were deemed to be dangerous to the government, were under the control of foreign nations and agents, or fomented dissent beyond what the FBI and the administration deemed acceptable. Eventually this scope expanded to the point that Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, various anti-war groups, and numerous other organizations and people ended up being spied upon, tracked, infilitrated, and intimidated. The Church Committee found numerous abuses by the FBI, the CIA, and other gummint agencies and in the aftermath of the committee's report, COINTELPRO died the death it so richly deserved.
Fast forward to today. Let's see... covertly track. The article mentions the FBI keeping files on groups such as the American Friends Service Committee and the ACLU itself.
What about intimidation? Last year, it was reported that the FBI visited individuals, their families, and friends in not-so-subtle attempts to discourage them from participating in protests at the Republican Convention in NYC. In the article I linked above, it states in part: "In addition to asking about easily accessible information such as current addresses, the agents also asked the parents for information on their sons' political activities." The agents then visited individuals directly, and apparently increased surveillance after these visits. These activists hadn't even done anything yet: they weren't in Boston or NYC, they hadn't done anything illegal. Yet they were essentially treated as criminals. If that isn't a form of intimidation, then I don't know what is. It isn't just the FBI, either. I mentioned in an earlier blog about the NYPD rounding up, arresting, and videotaping peaceful protesters (along with dozens of innocent bystanders!).
Lest you think this is all leftist gobbledygook, here's an excellent opinion piece by former Representative Bob Barr-- a man whose opinions and stances I normally detest. However, in this case, he and others are joining the ACLU (among other groups and individuals) to combat the Patriot Act. Barr recognizes that freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights an American has, and an essential part of what America is all about. When you lose the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, you essentially don't have an America anymore.
What really bothers me is that the upcoming sessions in the Senate to discuss whether or not to renew the Patriot Act are going to be held in secret. This piece of legislation affects all of us, since it concerns some of our most basic rights. So why is it being hashed out in private? Isn't the business of the gummint also the American people's business? What are they going to talk about in private that will affect us, that we're not going to know about until it's too late? For that matter, what about the proposed "Patriot Act II"? What rights and freedoms are we willing to give up in the name of security? This leads to deeper questions: What does America mean? If our Constitution is one of the defining points of the United States, what happens when it no longer means anything?
I have a quote that forms my sig on my personal e-mail, and it sums up how I feel about what's happening these days: "You could say that you are fighting for democracy abroad, but if you lose democracy at home, what have you won?"
Sounds like something someone could have said yesterday, huh? Maybe a Democratic politician, or a leftist activist, or a blogger. In fact, it was said by Frank Emi in 1944; Emi was interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, for the "crime" of being a Japanese American during WWII.
What indeed, are we winning?
While there certainly needs to be some level of awareness about domestic activities, we've had quite a few instances in recent history where the gummint has subverted laws and regulations to shadier purposes. During the 1950s, there was McCarthyism, where Senator Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and other minions worked to discredit and in essence destroy the lives of hundreds of people. Even before that, you had the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), once known as the Dies Committee. While HUAC was initially set up to investigate both left and right-wing extremists, thanks to Southern sympathizers on the committee groups such as the KKK were conveniently ignored and by the 1950s, the McCarthy era saw HUAC searching high and low for Communists. Even after McCarthy was censured, HUAC continued to operate until the 1970s. It really wouldn't surprise me if, in today's climate, we saw a resurgence of such a thing as HUAC.
The 1970s also saw the end of COINTELPRO, thanks to the Church Committee (named for its chair, Senator Frank Church of Idaho; formally known as the Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). COINTELPRO was an acronym for COunter-INTELigence PROgram, an arm of the FBI. It was started in the 50's as a means to covertly track, intimidate, and compromise groups that were deemed to be dangerous to the government, were under the control of foreign nations and agents, or fomented dissent beyond what the FBI and the administration deemed acceptable. Eventually this scope expanded to the point that Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, various anti-war groups, and numerous other organizations and people ended up being spied upon, tracked, infilitrated, and intimidated. The Church Committee found numerous abuses by the FBI, the CIA, and other gummint agencies and in the aftermath of the committee's report, COINTELPRO died the death it so richly deserved.
Fast forward to today. Let's see... covertly track. The article mentions the FBI keeping files on groups such as the American Friends Service Committee and the ACLU itself.
What about intimidation? Last year, it was reported that the FBI visited individuals, their families, and friends in not-so-subtle attempts to discourage them from participating in protests at the Republican Convention in NYC. In the article I linked above, it states in part: "In addition to asking about easily accessible information such as current addresses, the agents also asked the parents for information on their sons' political activities." The agents then visited individuals directly, and apparently increased surveillance after these visits. These activists hadn't even done anything yet: they weren't in Boston or NYC, they hadn't done anything illegal. Yet they were essentially treated as criminals. If that isn't a form of intimidation, then I don't know what is. It isn't just the FBI, either. I mentioned in an earlier blog about the NYPD rounding up, arresting, and videotaping peaceful protesters (along with dozens of innocent bystanders!).
Lest you think this is all leftist gobbledygook, here's an excellent opinion piece by former Representative Bob Barr-- a man whose opinions and stances I normally detest. However, in this case, he and others are joining the ACLU (among other groups and individuals) to combat the Patriot Act. Barr recognizes that freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights an American has, and an essential part of what America is all about. When you lose the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, you essentially don't have an America anymore.
What really bothers me is that the upcoming sessions in the Senate to discuss whether or not to renew the Patriot Act are going to be held in secret. This piece of legislation affects all of us, since it concerns some of our most basic rights. So why is it being hashed out in private? Isn't the business of the gummint also the American people's business? What are they going to talk about in private that will affect us, that we're not going to know about until it's too late? For that matter, what about the proposed "Patriot Act II"? What rights and freedoms are we willing to give up in the name of security? This leads to deeper questions: What does America mean? If our Constitution is one of the defining points of the United States, what happens when it no longer means anything?
I have a quote that forms my sig on my personal e-mail, and it sums up how I feel about what's happening these days: "You could say that you are fighting for democracy abroad, but if you lose democracy at home, what have you won?"
Sounds like something someone could have said yesterday, huh? Maybe a Democratic politician, or a leftist activist, or a blogger. In fact, it was said by Frank Emi in 1944; Emi was interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, for the "crime" of being a Japanese American during WWII.
What indeed, are we winning?
posted by Mr. Sandman | 10:47 PM
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