The Patriot Act is widely unpopular among intellectuals, and condemned by the very Congressmen and Senators who voted for it, but it's not obvious why. The amazing thing is how feeble the criticisms are. They seem to amount to moaning about the bad things an evil Justice Department *could* do under the Act, with a complete absence of examples of anything it actually *did* do or any discussion of the myriad bad things an evil Justice Department could do and has done (under Clinton) even without the Act. The Weekly Standard has a good article on this (boldface mine).
It never fails. Democrats running for office think attacking the Patriot Act is a
winner. Wesley Clark, Dean's leading rival for the presidential nomination in
every national poll, says the Patriot Act has "essentially suspended habeas corpus,
" and nobody seems to mind that Clark's charge is "essentially" baseless. Senator
John Edwards says he's "horrified" by what the Patriot Act has
wrought and
wants a fair chunk of it canceled--this, barely two years after Edwards, along
with every other Democratic senator but one, voted to enact the thing to begin
with. Edwards, too, routinely denounces the Patriot Act for producing law
enforcement "excesses" that, truth be told, long predate that law, lie far outside its
purview, or are entirely imaginary. And Edwards, too, routinely gets standing
ovations in the process.
...
... the 150-plus terrorism convictions made possible only by the Patriot Act--
about how federal agents, using investigative tools freshly granted to them by that law,
have since disrupted terrorist cells in Buffalo, Seattle, Portland, and Detroit.
...
And California's Dianne Feinstein went further still, in a stern and lengthy
lecture about the concrete reality of U.S. anti-terrorism law--as opposed to the
paranoiac fantasy version now being circulated throughout the land by the likes of Bob
Barr and Howard Dean. How's about we concentrate on some facts, Feinstein suggested.
"I've tried to see what has happened in the complaints that have come in," she said,
"and I've received to date 21,434 complaints about the Patriot Act." Except these
turned out to be unrelated civil liberties gripes, or complaints about a "Patriot Act
II" that doesn't yet exist. "I have never had a single [verified] abuse of the Patriot
Act reported to me. My staff emailed the ACLU and asked them for instances of actual
abuses. They emailed back and said they had none."
Dean's lusty attacks on the Bush administration, however, were a great deal more
successful. Particularly when he went after the Justice Department for its
implementation of domestic counterterrorism measures authorized by the USA Patriot Act
of 2001, a law which is "shameful" and "morally wrong" and "unconstitutional."
For this, Howard Dean got a standing ovation.
Some of the condemnation is just dishonest politicking by the Democrats, but not all
of it. Libertarians seem quite upset, too-- though we must note that they, too, dislike
and fear Attorney-General Ashcroft because he is an evangelical and against vices such
as pornography and drug use. Part though, I think, is due to a kind of fantasizing
that people engage in because it makes them feel aware of a special danger and
superior to the sleeping masses.
Thus, librarians are upset that the Patriot Act makes it easier for the FBI to find out what books patrons are checking out. First, why would it be bad if the FBI found out what books I am checking out? I have nothing to hide. And if it is a public library, I can't see why the records shouldn't be publicly posted somewhere. I know that would be very useful policy for university libraries, since in the case of many books that I want that are already checked out, I probably know the person who has checked it out (another economist, no doubt) and that person would be glad to lend it to me for an hour. But at library schools, I hear that they preach patron privacy as a sort of divine law.
In the case of terrorists, library information could be quite useful. If somebody is checking out lots of books on how to fly jets, how to build bombs, and commentaries on the Koran, I think the library itself should report that to the FBI, without the FBI having to come to the library first. And if the library does not, and a terrorist act occurs, I think it would be reasonable to bring criminal charges against the library staff for complicity, if they know about it. The death penalty would not be inappropriate for a librarian who helps a patron kill 100 people.
Of course, we also learn now that the FBI has not yet invoked the Patriot Act's library records provision even a single time.
Contrast this, with, say, the Clinton Administration's FBI files scandal. Political appointees in the Administration got hold of confidential FBI files on their political opponents. It made the news for a while, but I don't recall anybody even going to jail. And this was not something hypothetical--it was information that had no possible legitimate use for the Clintonites who got hold of it, and plenty of illegitimate use, since the FBI asks appointees precisely for information that could be embarassing if it leaked out. But people who worry about civil liberties seem to worry more about hypothetical violations than actual ones, and I don't think this is even purely partisan. I have to admit, though, that part of the difference may be that the people who complain about the Patriot Act thought Clinton was such a good person that any abuses in his Administration were done out of the goodness of somebody's heart and had no potential for real harm, whereas Bush is such a bad person that even if we don't hear about any abuses, he is probably trying commit some or has successfully covered them up. But I will discuss Bush-hating another day.
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