Even as the war on terrorism’s multi-billion dollar price
tag continues to grow, the real payment Americans are making is one
in civil rights, said a panel of experts who spoke Friday at the
UCLA School of Law.
The panelists, ACLU Staff Attorney Ben Wizner; Professor Scott
Bowman from California State University, Los Angeles; Professor
Terry Givens from the University of Washington; Professor William
Aceves from the California Western School of Law and UCLA Professor
Daniel Garst, spoke at a symposium that drew a crowd of about
100.
Carla Thornson, who works for the UCLA Center for European and
Eurasian studies, a co-sponsor of the event, said the symposium was
planned to explore the link between terrorism and civil rights.
Wizner addressed conflicts between liberty and security in the
post-Sept. 11, 2001 United States and said there has been a steady
assault on civil liberties by the U.S. government since the
terrorist attacks in 2001.
Earlier this year, the FBI ordered that the counting of mosques
be included in a measure that sets goals for investigation and
wiretapping based on demographic profiles of communities. The FBI
defended the measure, saying the mosque tally would be used to keep
track of hate crimes, but Wizner called the measure a “recipe
for a witch-hunt.”
“Instead of justifying why it’s investigating
certain mosques, now it’s why it isn’t investigating
them,” Wizner said.
Wizner added that while infringements on civil liberties during
times of war are not unusual, what is unusual is the concept of a
war on terrorism.
The main difference between a war on terrorism and a
conventional war, according to Bowman and Wizner, is that a
conventional war has an end whereas the war on terrorism has no
foreseeable conclusion.
“Conventional wars … are like a game of chess,”
Bowman said. “(The war on terrorism) is analogous to playing
the card game War. The game will end when one player has all the
cards ““ it’s an indefinite state of national
emergency.”
The dangers of perpetual warfare, Bowman said, are amplified
when violations of civil rights become the norm.
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001 by Congress, gives the U.S.
government broad authority to “intercept wire, oral and
electronic communications.” Bowman said the act allows the
government to collect information about “virtually every
aspect of our daily lives … without a warrant or probable
cause.”
“It’s not a totalitarian state … but it’s an
undermining of the courts, a highly secretive government,”
Bowman said.
Garst and Givens, who spoke on reactions to terrorism in Europe,
said most European countries have dealt with terrorism for decades
or centuries. Many European countries already have measures in
place to deal with terrorist attacks, Givens added.
“Sept. 11 simply gave them more incentive to push these
data-mining and wiretapping measures,” Givens said.
Aceves examined threats to civil liberties around the world and
said a difference between European and U.S. infringements on civil
rights is that in the United States there is no super-national
court to which detainees or other appellants can appeal.
“(In Europe) you’ve got another review ““ the
European Court of Human Rights. In the United States we just
don’t recognize any court,” Aceves said.
John Marciano, a retired professor whose wife teaches at UCLA,
said he attended the event to hear experts speak about topics that
are addressed but often not analyzed in the media.
“Given what’s going on in the country ““ the
war, the PATRIOT Act, the assaults on the Bill of Rights by the
Bush regime ““ I just wanted to come and hear some experts
talk about it,” Marciano said.
The symposium was co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for European
and Eurasian Studies, the Friends of Goethe of Southern California,
Inc., the UCLA School of Law Program in Public Interest Law and
Policy, and the Southern California Consortium on International
Studies.