|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Two years since the frightening "Patriot Act II" was leaked to the public, and more than three years since passage of the original and horribly misnamed USA Patriot Act (USAPA), the u.$. government's post-9/11 domestic agenda has done more to abuse the rights and violate the privacy of its citizens than to protect them from "terrorism." The FBI has summoned the reading lists and persynal data of library users and bookstore customers,(1) as well as airline passenger lists, both without the knowledge of the people whose information was gathered. The head of NORTHCOM (the largest centralized military authority within u.$. borders since the Civil War) told PBS: "we are not going to be out there spying on people, [but] we get information from people who do."(2)
International students have been targeted for surveillance of their course schedules, and immigrants are being disappeared for months at a time in Amerikan jails. The Justice Department just reported that an unnamed Federal prison's administration and staff has been "discriminating and retaliating" against Muslim prisoners, while an FBI agent sent out a message to field agents "identifying the names and addresses of the proprietors and customers of a Muslim-based website," instructing them to "take whatever action it deemed appropriate" against people they recognized on the list.(3) Some of these actions are now legal under the USA Patriot Act, some illegal: all are excused by the authorities under the guise of national security.
The current political climate prompted one activist to write: "There is no war on terrorism. There is only the ongoing effort by the federal government to collect as much information on as many people as possible."(4) Both Patriot Acts can unite a broad spectrum of progressive politics in opposition: open border advocates, civil libertarians, anarchists, communists, and any activists who care about their ability to gather in public and speak up without being subjected to FBI surveillance or worse in exchange.
The government is desperate to defend the USA Patriot Act (USAPA). Its major civil-liberties slashing provisions will either be renewed or expire at the end of this year. Yet the best example Attorney General Gonzalez can offer of the USAPA "necessity" is that of a solved murder case that was unconnected to terrorism.(5) Choosing to focus on the campaign to keep the USAPA in business, the Bush administration has backed down from the righteous protests of activists ranging from libertarian to communist against Patriot Act II. Instead, the administration and Congress are breaking PAII into bite-sized chunks. Just this year, Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 -- not much more than a raft of regulations designed to make it harder for non-citizens to come to and stay in this country.
Among other things, this law:
* authorizes hiring up to 10,000 border patrol agents and adding 40,000
beds for immigration detention and deportation facilities between 2006 and
2010;
* tasks Homeland Security (DHS) with implementation of an automated
biometric (fingerprints, photographs) entry-exit program;
* makes receiving "military-type" training from a listed terrorist
organization a deportable offense for an immigrant, and blocks admission
to the united $tates for anyone who has participated in extrajudicial "genocide,
torture or killing" (both deeply interpretable offenses: obviously the Border
Patrol is not now picking up School of the Americas graduates.)
* tasks the Department of Transportation with developing a national
standard for state-issued drivers' licenses and ID cards;
* provides for testing advanced technology to secure the
sparsely-populated border with Kanada and for remote-controlled aircraft
surveillance of the southwest border;
* makes visa application requirements more stringent and orders a GAO
study on potential weaknesses in the U.$. asylum system.(6)
Like the USAPA, this law works on people's fear and the assumption that if we can only control people's movements tightly enough, all will be copacetic. But honest political analysis will say that free cross-border movement did not cause the 9/11 attacks (which is not possible given that u.$. borders are not open), but by a steadily mounting pattern of u.$. aggression internationally. This country's government cannot protect its own people because it survives only by terrorizing the international populace. The world's people respond with violence -- the only response this country understands. Gutting the Bill of Rights will not make Amerika safe from those who have suffered its hegemony. The only chance for safety is getting right with the world's people through international peace achieved under communism.
The sooner the Amerikan people can join the international community and put an end to u.$. militarism, the healthier their prospects for future survival will be. Amerikans have lived for hundreds of years as if their fate is not bound up with that of the world's people. The people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Korea and Iran do not have the luxury of such blind ignorance. 9/11 only proved that given time, the community of oppressed nations will demonstrate to the u.$. people how small the planet has become.
Notes:
1. http://www.ala.org
2. http://progressivetrail.org/articles/050128Turse.shtml
3. Boston Globe 12 March, 2005.
4. Jim Redden, "Snitch Culture: How Citizens Are Turned Into the Eyes and
Ears of the State" as quoted at ala.org
5. New York Daily News 14 March, 2005
6. http://www.keralanext.com/news/indexread.asp?id=147585;
http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=46481;
http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/cdev/congrssdev018.htm
7. See MIM's website for background on both Patriot Acts and future
updates: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/civlib.html