CIVIL LIBERTIES IN A POST 9-11 WORLD
By: David Phillips
Since 9-11, Bush has covertly
put into action; programs that he says are meant to help identify terrorists or
Evil Doers as he likes to call them. But in his eagerness to track down these
Evil Doers, he has made a mockery of our Constitution and trampled on dozens of
our Civil Liberties.
Some of these programs
even have names meant to instill a sense of nationalism like the Patriot Act,
or the Military Commissions Act. Other programs were never meant to become
publicly known, but whistleblowers have leaked many other programs to the
Newspapers such as the NY Times.
Programs such as the
Patriot Act that allow the FBI to search your home or business without a search
warrant, and it even allows them to do this when you
are not there. And if they do find something, they can then get a search
warrant wait for your return then do another search and then arrest you. This
has appropriately been named Sneak and Peek.
There are dozens of
other programs neatly tucked away in the Patriot Act that allows the FBI and
other agencies to gather information. The Patriot Act also gives the government
some very freighting powers, including the ability to make secret arrests,
issue secret subpoenas, create a vast new DNA database and even strip Americans
of their citizenship and deport them.
We have since learned
that only six people in congress said that they had read the entire Patriot Act
prior to voting in favor of it.
A couple of months ago
we found out that the FBI has been abusing the Patriot Act to gather hundreds
of thousands of illegal wiretaps on American citizens. FBI Director Robert
Muller was called to testify before congress to explain the abuse, Muller did
admit that some of his field agents exceeded the authorization that the Patriot
Act provides and Muller said that he would make sure that it does not happen
again.
Another program called
the Military Commissions Act allows the CIA to literally kidnap someone
anywhere in the world, usher them off to a secret prison and conduct various
act of torture, which Vice President Dick Cheney calls “Intense
Interrogation.”
The Military
Commissions Act has also suspended the right of Habeas Corpus for detainees,
which is the constitutional right to have your case seen by a court of law, and
to determine whether the detention is lawful.
Two weeks ago we
learned that the FBI is seeking to create a data base consisting of more than
six billion records on all Americans. That works out to more than 20 individual
records for every man, women and child in the
House Science and Technology Committee members Brad Miller
(D-NC) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) requested last week that the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) investigate the proposal.
A story in The Washington Post last Thursday found
"that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than
1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial
transactions in recent years."
"Two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents'
requests for information that
Another program called The Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program is designed to track financial transactions from more than 200
countries through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based,
bank-owned entity, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and
overseen by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
The National Security Agency (NSA) with authorization from Bush,
have been wiretapping phones and data mining e-mails of American citizens,
hundreds of thousands of them at a time, without a warrant for Bush’s so
called War on Terror.
Bush has said that the Powers of the President, give him the
authority to wiretap anyone he wants in his fight against the Evil Doers. Last
August a Federal Judge in
A couple of months ago we learned that Bush had given the
approval for our mail to be intercepted, opened, read, confiscated or done with
whatever he or they want. Bush said that a Signing Statement gives him the
power to intercept all mail.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said it's "simply not
true" that the president has the authority to open someone's mail. The
congressman went on to say, that Bush's action is "contrary to the
Constitution." Hinchey said the president's use of signing statements to
gain more power has "corrupted the legislative process."
Bush has enacted programs that; wiretapped your phones
without warrants, data mined your e-mails without warrants, read your mail
without warrants, read your financial transactions without warrants, read your
health and education records without warrants, arrest and torture people
without warrants, and he has suspended Habeas Corpus.
CIA Kidnappings and Torture or extraordinary rendition by
the United States, with regard to the transfer of suspected terrorists to
countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques (torture by proxy)
that may rise to the level of torture.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently suing
Boeing for providing transportation for the rendition of three terror suspects.
The Italian courts have indicted 26 CIA agents, including the
President Bush has signed more than 800 Signing Statements;
these signing statements according to Bush, allow him to enact these programs
without the approval of Congress or the Courts.
A signing statement is a written pronouncement issued by the
President of the
Last year the American Bar Association described President
Bush’s use of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted
laws as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of
separation of powers.
Bush has signed more Signing Statements then all the other
presidents added together. Signing Statements are not new, but Bush has used
these signing statements in order to skirt constitutional laws. He has misused
and abused this privilege; Bush has used this power to Decree Law, and for the
first six years as President, and with a Republican controlled congress, his
abuse went unchecked.
The Government is building mammoth data bases that will have
records on every man, women and child. The Government uses the backdrop of
security and tells us that they are gathering all these records on American
citizens so they can protect us from the Terrorists or Evil Doers.
We the people have allowed our government to trample on our
Constitution and trample on our Civil Liberties, all in the name of little Security.
Benjamin Franklin said: “Any society that would give
up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose
both.”
Sounds like
If you are not
outraged by what you just read, then you have not been paying attention.
David Phillips is a Vietnam Era Veteran, he is a
Democratic Party Activist, and he is also the Publisher and Editor of the
online political magazine YodasWorld.org E-Mail Questions or Comments to: oneyoda@aol.com