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Journal Opinion
'Are We Scared Enough Yet?'The history of America, from British suppression of the colonists' liberties before the Revolutionary War to passage of the Patriot Act, is one of government trying to restrict freedoms in the name of making citizens' safer.It is also the history of American citizens resisting government efforts to take away liberties and intrude on their privacy. And although this country has successfully resisted government expanding its powers at the expense of the Bill of Rights, that's no guarantee this will always be the case. Whether the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, President Lincoln suspending writs of habeas corpus, Franklin D. Roosevelt interning Japanese-Americans in World War II, or FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover illegally spying on civil rights leaders and anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, government has always justified its actions with three arguments: Trust us. We won't abuse this power. Trust us. This will make us safer. Trust us. We won't infringe on your liberties maybe theirs but not yours."But history teaches us they will abuse this power," the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, Jeffrey M. Gamso, reminded a like-minded audience at Youngstown State University Sept. 9. "Government aggregates power to itself and abuses it." The cases Gamso cited of how the Ashcroft Justice Department has violated citizens' rights, arresting peoplewithout charge and accusing them of being terrorists, holding them until Justice Department bureaucrats determine they are no longer threats, were humorous because of the absurdities. But these absurdities are real and demonstrate a mind-set that anyone who doesn't conform sometimes even those who do has reason to be scared.Forty-two days after 9/11, Congress enacted the Patriot Act in haste, the attorney general of the United States accusing those who opposed it of treason, Gamso said. The act, 346 pages long, has 140 provisions, some of which should make us safer, especially those about monitoring and guarding our borders. But 35 of the 36 instances Justice offers on its Web site of how it has used powers granted by Patriot have nothing to do with increasing security. Instead they have been used to fight crime. On the sole exception, he said, Justice said it used the act in connection with national security but won't say how because that would violate national security. Moreover, the detainees arrested in Afghanistan and shipped to Guantanamo Bay are not held under Patriot's provisions, Gamso pointed out.Another provision allows Justice agents to not only check a library patron's reading habits but to compel an Internet provider to produce all the Web sites a citizen has visited no justification needed and not allow either the library or provider to inform the patron or browser of the inquiry."Are we scared enough yet?" Gamso asked at the outset. A better question: Do enough Americans know enough to be scared?"