Keep Us Safe!

The law entitled ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act’—isn’t that clever? If you take the first initials, it spells out ‘USA PATRIOT’—was supposed to keep us safer by dismantling all those pesky and legalistic technical protections against government intrusion into our privacy.

Here’s a partial list of what that act, passed by wide margins of solons belonging to BOTH of our distinguished political parties, permitted the government to do: search your telephone and e-mail communications and medical, financial and other records without a warrant; indefinitely detain you if you are a non-citizen pursuant to your deportation on suspicion of terrorism-related acts and refuse you entry if you have incorrect ideas; find out what library books you take out; secretly search your home and property; monitor your Internet searches. Et cetera.

It also established military involvement in domestic law enforcement activities, authorized ‘roving’ wiretaps without probable cause of a crime and permitted ‘sneak and peek’ searches not revealed to the target (later overturned by a judge). This is aside from the complete destruction of judicial review of federal wiretapping of private domestic communications.

So how did all those wonderful new tools help protect us from terrorism? According to the inimitable Joe Lieberman, the Ft Hood shootings were the latest terrorist assault on America. So then how did it occur within the U.S. Army? That is, despite all these police-state methods, the most tightly monitored and controlled institution in the country did not notice that it had a mentally unbalanced dissident in its midst, nowithstanding gigantic warning signs emanating from him over a period of years.

So that’s what we got in exchange for being railroaded into giving up our protections against abuses by agents of the state. It’s wonderful to see how insouciant Americans are about government power when awarding police more nifty tools, then watch them go completely insane when that same state entity wants to find a way to provide health care for its citizens.

Fascists! Nazis! Socialists taking over America! The teabag discourse has a certain resonance among the populace, and it’s not a bad thing to be wary about the state behemoth. But it’s ironic to see how selective people’s fears really are.

As for the authors of USA PATRIOT, this pathetic record not only disrobes their incompetence but also suggests that their motives were more about adolescent emotions all along, that once again they exploited genuine fears to turn themselves into swaggering dicks with new toys. Bipeds are so predictable.