Years ago, coal miners relied on canaries to alert workers if levels of toxic gases in the mineshaft reached dangerous levels. If the songbirds went silent, miners immediately fled the shaft. Today, as the Bush administration pushes to renew the majority of the Patriot Act, the nation relies on canaries in the Senate to protect Americans from the dangers of data mining.
If passed by Congress, the revised Patriot Act would reauthorize several data mining provisions that violate private citizens' civil liberties. By pressuring Congress to permanently adopt the revised act before major surveillance and investigative powers expire in December, the administration hopes to silence canaries of free speech both swiftly and silently.
Under the revised act, 14 of 16 previously existing provisions would stand unchanged. The government would implement a seven-year extension on the two remaining provisions, which involve government demands for library and business records and the use of roving wiretaps.
Although these changes attempt to establish accountability between the Justice Department and Congress, the eloquently-worded concessions do nothing to correct the failures of the original legislation. In fact, under the revised act, potentially innocent people would endure even greater affronts to their civil liberties.
One proposed addition to the Patriot Act would weaken the safeguard of habeas corpus in federal cases, not just those linked to terrorism. Restriction of habeas corpus petitions would inevitably lead to the unjust imprisonment of innocent people.
Furthermore, reauthorization of national security letters, which grant the government the right to request private information from businesses without judicial oversight, would subject citizens to silent and compulsory governmental servitude. The administration also hopes to reauthorize gag rules that force recipients of such letters to keep quiet. Together, these provisions grant the government blanket permission to mine information on innocent Americans.
Granted, some provisions of the Patriot Act may have foiled terrorist plots and protected innocent Americans. Still, the original Patriot Act passed hastily in the wake of Sept. 11 with the expectation that Congress would scale back the most atrocious provisions upon re-evaluation. The prevailing existences of these provisions in the current draft and the introduction of new egregious proposals indicate a decisive movement away from anti-terror and toward anti-freedom legislation.
As a faithful canary to his constituents, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, in collaboration with a bipartisan group of six senators, forced the Senate to back away from passing the revised act last Friday. In a statement to the press, Feingold said, 'I remain committed to doing everything I can to stop any bill that does not contain adequate protections for our rights and freedoms.'
Although advocates of the revised Patriot Act hoped to silence the canaries in time for a nice poultry dinner this Thanksgiving, six Senate canaries curtailed the celebration. Time remains for the Congress to reach a reasonable agreement on the act, and in the words of Feingold, 'Real debate needs to occur in the Senate and across the country on these crucial issues.'
Affronts to freedom endanger the livelihood of each individual and weaken the nation's ability to fight terrorism. The nation requires protection from terrorism, but not in the form of a more stringent Patriot Act that violates Americans' civil liberties.
