Thursday, February 17, 2011

Understanding the Need and the Freedoms

One of my favorite class discussions is usually arises during the American Government block on our Bill of Rights and the flexibility of the seemingly immutable language, "Congress shall make no law..."

Inevitably when I ask for examples of laws which have infringed and sacrificed our rights, someone will offer the Patriot Act and the total destruction of American society. I will usually respond to this apprentice of the American Civil Liberties Union with the simple question, "How have you been impacted since 2001 by the USA Patriot Act?"

They will offer up a blather of propaganda explaining about their privacy being invaded by monitoring phones, intercepting emails, tracking their library checkouts (despite never having been in a library or bookstore in years) and their home invasions. Has any of that impacted them? Well, no. But it might.

Have they ever looked at their cellphone bills listing every call during the last month? The date, time, number called and duration are all documented. Do they know that government subpoenas of that information were rebuffed successfully in court? Do they know that libraries generally do not retain records of checkouts after materials are returned? Do they know that libraries have never been subpoenaed for that data? Have they ever heard of a FISA warrant? Did they think that wireless communication was otherwise secure?

In other words the Patriot Act has proven generally effective and largely undamaging to our privacy.

That's why I like this:

Time to Extend the Protections

We live in dangerous times. Technology is both our friend and our enemy. We should understand that every tool has good uses and bad ones. We need to be sure that when we use our tools we actually know what they are doing and not what the opponents of the tool would have us believe.

2 comments:

Murphy's Law said...

Ed,

I have noticed that many of those who criticized the Patriot Act loudly and continuously when it was first signed into law under then-President Bush have been strangely silent now that Obama is renewing it. These are also many of the same people who wailed about the cost of two wars every day when Bush was running it, but now that their guy is in charge, suddenly the financial costs and the deaths (both of which have risen in Afghanistan since B.O. took over) are no longer worthy of their protest. These issues are nothing but stalking horses for most of the ones who complain about them. They're a means to attack particular leaders exclusively without looking overtly partisan. But we can rest assured that as soon as a Republican takes over in 2012, the faces of our war dead will again appear in the major newspapers regularly and the large "anti-war" protests will begin anew.

Oh--and the Patriot Act will suddenly be a very bad thing again.

jjet said...

"Oh well, the people had little real cause to worry. After all, those laws hardly ever affected anyone that they knew. Certainly not the people who mattered most of all: the country's favorite celebrities and sports teams, who so occupied the people's attention. And how bad could it be if it had not yet been the subject of a Movie of the Week, telling them what to think and how to feel about it? "

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=1874

Taken from the "Walter Mitty's Second Amendment" article.

Should I mention Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous quote?