The deceptively named USA PATRIOT Act grants the government the
right to infringe on people’s private affairs in the name of
warding off potential terrorist attacks. In effect, it gives the
FBI what amounts to espionage abilities.
In response, the American Librarians Association recently
decried the PATRIOT Act because it allows the FBI to search through
library book records and access e-mail sent from library computers.
The ALA regards this as an infringement on First Amendment
rights.
The FBI defends its investigative methods by saying they must
get clearance from a judge before they search library records and
that they must demonstrate “probable cause” for why
they would conduct a search. But the reality of the situation is
that, given the hypersensitivity attached to the word
“terrorism,” some judges will be reluctant to
thoroughly challenge the FBI’s evidence demonstrating
probable cause. Adopting a “better-safe-than-sorry”
attitude, will lead to virtually unchecked government intrusion
into private lives. Few judges will throw out a case with terrorism
implications if the FBI is pressuring them into approving a search.
The rights of the vast majority will thus be sacrificed in the
search for a miniscule population of dubious existence.
The government might have a better case for invading book
records and e-mail accounts if national security ““ and an
immediate threat to it ““ was an issue. But in this case,
it’s not. Surely if an operation within the United States is
dangerous enough to pose a public risk, the FBI should have more
information about it than that which could be derived from knowing
if a person checked out a chemistry book.
According to the frenzied government standards of what
constitutes a threat to national security, there will never be a
time when the public is actually “safe.” Using scare
tactics to panic the American public into looking the other way
when legislation curbs civil liberties is a convenient alternative
to actually doing difficult, albeit civilly minded research.
History looks back and laughs at the McCarthy Era when some
members of the government fed the public so much propaganda about
communism that people became convinced a red insurrection was
imminent in the United States. It wasn’t, but people were
unfairly searched, interrogated and jailed in an attempt to be
“better safe than sorry.”
Now we have the opportunity of witnessing the same thing, this
time with the constant fear of terrorist activity. And again
citizens passively allow the gradual usurpation of their rights to
privacy because they’re convinced they have “nothing to
hide.” This trivializes the Constitution a great degree.
Whether someone has anything to hide is immaterial. Privacy rights
are in place to prevent the government from racial profiling and
unfairly targeting and abusing individuals, and to assure every
person has a free space to their own.
Some may consider disallowing the FBI from checking to see who
borrowed a physics book trivial, but that very triviality speaks to
the capability of the FBI to seek other means of investigation. The
FBI shouldn’t be given free reign over private library
records because they don’t want to do their homework.