ENGLISH FOR SENATE POSITION PAPER ON:
Preserving Constitutional Liberties
The passage of the Patriot Act and its recent extension represents a
most serious threat to our constitutional protections contained in the
Bill of Rights and subsequent Amendments, as well as other civil rights
legislation enacted to protect the citizens from abuses of government
power. Recent revelations about the treatment of prisoners taken
abroad, the denial of due process, and flaunting of international
conventions on the treatment of captives have severely tarnished the
reputation and standing of this country with the rest of the
world. Similarly, additional revelations about the extent of
domestic spying upon American citizens in direct defiance of our laws
and traditions are the worst threat to our civil liberties since the
witch hunts of the McCarthy era. What makes the current abuses of
power so worrisome is the fact that modern computer-based information
technology has given the government vast surveillance and intrusive
capabilites beyond anything remotely imaginable 50 years ago.
Every email message, every telephone call, every electronic financial
transaction, every computer based information search, all
data transmitted by land lines or the airwaves, even mail processed by
electronic sorters, could be easily accessed and quicky collated into
totally secret information profiles and elctronic data sets for every
resident and visitor in this country.
The recent appointment of General Michael Hayden to be the new Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency is most unsettling because now an
extremely competent and unethical military executive whose agency has
already engaged in illegal spying will assume de
facto control of information within the entire foreign intelligence
establishment. It is only a matter of time before the electronic
surveillance and intrusion capabilites of the NSA are extended to
invade the privacy of all living within
the United States. At that point, General Hayden will have become
the Dr. Strangelove of the Bush Administration. His
recent confirmation vote by the Senate, including the affirmative votes
of the
two sitting Democratic Maryland Senators, is a travesty upon the
Constitution and upon our civil liberties.
Hopefully, the Democrats will regain control of both houses of Congress
in the November elections and can begin to undo the abuses of power
that now threaten our civil liberties. The issuance of
National Security Letters by the FBI should be immediately suspended
until it is made subject to rigorous prior judicial search warrant
authorization with the rights restored for all recipients to be
represented by legal counsel and seek injunctive relief. .
At the present time, recipients of these National Security Letters have
no legal recourse to challenge their issuance or protest the demands
made upon them by the FBI. They are currently forbidden to speak
with anyone about them, even their own lawyers. Monthly reporting
of the number, kind, and general categories of these issuances should
be made public for each state and U. S. territory affected.
Special closed door quarterly briefings of each state's assembled
Congressional delegation should be implemented to report on and
discuss the number, details, and specific purposes justifying the
issuance of these letters in that state. As the first item
discussed in the next Congress, the Patriot Act must be reviewed
and revised, if not abolished, to restore the civil liberties
threatened by its current provisions and their ongoing
enforcement. Similarly, the recent activities of the FBI ahould
be reviewed for their intrusion upon the privacy of law-abiding
citizens. The abuses of constitutional liberties commited by the
FBI during the 1960s must not be permitted to recur.
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Designed by Imad-ad-Dean,
Inc.