POINT/COUNTERPOINT

As Congress debates the fate of key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, the legislation continues to serve as a flashpoint for criticism of the Bush Administration. Yet, when opposition groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union make accusations that the act threatens or tramples our cherished First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, they stoop to the level of misinformation and fear-mongering that they claim their opponents inhabit. In reality, the statute sensibly closes loopholes that tied the hands of counter-terrorism agencies in the pre-9/11 world. One need not support Bush nor his anti-terror policies to appreciate its importance.

Instead of stripping away our rights of free speech and freedom from unwarranted government searches or seizures, the PATRIOT Act simply applies to anti-terrorism procedures the long-standing practices used in standard policing. Detractors might be hard-pressed to explain why, prior to the Act, authorities could apply for a roving wiretap (allowing surveillance over all a suspect’s communications) if a drug dealer switched cell-phones but could not if a suspected terrorist did the same. Similarly, the controversial “sneak and peek” provision of the Act—which grants warrants allowing officials to search a location without a terror suspect’s knowledge—seems less controversial when one realizes that this procedure was already available for standard policing.

Even the much-maligned Section 215 of the Act, which authorizes the surveillance of library records and bookstore purchases, is more palpable when one learns that the domestic law enforcement version of this tool helped in the 1998 conviction of “Unabomber” Theodore J. Kaczynski ’62. Regardless, alarmists’ fears of this section might be assuaged by the fact that not a single library warrant has been issued under the Act.

Opponents of the law need to get past the Act’s Orwellian name and its connection to the controversial Bush Administration. Even Bush critic Richard Clarke found much to praise at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last year: “I can’t find anything wrong with [the PATRIOT Act], and if I’d had it prior to 9/11, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to stop 9/11.”

John W. Hastrup ’06, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.

It only proves to prevent freedom

Since the hasty passage of the USA PATRIOT Act just after Sept. 11, 2001, five states and 373 cities have passed resolutions against the Act, with 14 states and hundreds of cities pending similar legislation. At the heart of all of these resolutions is a resistance to the Act’s dangerous and unnecessary power-grabs at the expense of the constitutionally protected civil liberties of the citizens and legal residents of the United States.

Although the PATRIOT Act was rushed through Congress as a supposed anti-terrorism measure, many portions of the Act cannot clearly be linked to the prevention of terrorist activities but instead amount, as the State of Vermont’s resolution states, to “the ability of the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in domestic spying activities.”

Such portions of the Act include sections 203, 215, 218, 219, 358, 507 and 508, which collectively grant federal officials broad access to mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records in direct violation of many states’ privacy laws, as well as the Constitutional right to privacy. Many of these same clauses, however (203(b)(d), 215, 218), are set to expire on Dec. 31, 2005 Allowing these to lapse would successfully invalidate some of the most disturbing provisions of the Act, including Section 215, which grants federal access to library records and is cited most frequently in local resolutions against the Act.

Ironically, no persuasive argument can be made for extending these provisions, precisely because the Act itself requires no reporting to Congress or the courts regarding its own effectiveness; no real evidence can be offered in support of its renewal. The structure and content of the Act itself, however, are enough to make the correct course clear. At a time when the United States is trying to posture as the palladium of freedom and limited government around the world, it makes little sense to renew a law that undermines those principles in our own country—the very principles that differentiate us from the type of regime and ideology we seek to banish.

Susan E. McGregor ’05, a Crimson editorial editor, is a special concentrator in Interactive Information Design associated with Quincy House.