CIVIL LIBERTIES

An Un-PATRIOT-ic Compromise

"Benjamin Franklin once said that a country that would give up their liberties for security deserves neither," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) remarked yesterday. "Well, we can have our security. We can have our liberties." Unfortunately, the Patriot Act deal reached by House and Senate negotiators yesterday does not accomplish that. Specifically, it doesn't do enough to protect the privacy rights of ordinary Americans. Government investigators can still obtain personal data too easily and operate without proper supervision from the courts. The bill is already causing a stir on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of six Senators -- Sens. Larry Craig (R-ID), John Sununu (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Russ Feingold (D-WI) -- have come out against it, saying they are "gravely disappointed," and Feingold has threatened to block the legislation with a filibuster. To learn more about why Congress should reject the Patriot Act conference report, read this statement from American Progress.

WEAK PROTECTIONS AGAINST NATIONAL SECURITY LETTERS: The government began issuing National Security Letters (NSLs) in the 1970s as "narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents." The Patriot Act "transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies." NSL recipients are not allowed to tell anyone they have received them. The Washington Post reported last month that the FBI now hands out over 30,000 national security letters per year, "a hundredfold increase over historic norms," which are allowing the government to view "as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans." Yesterday's compromise does not do enough to protect the civil liberties of the citizens these letters target. The extended NSL authority will not sunset like other controversial sections of the Patriot Act and investigators can still force courts to accept the government's argument that NSL gag orders should not be lifted.

OBTAINING PERSONAL RECORDS STILL TOO EASY: The controversial issue of library record searches intensified earlier this year, after an American Library Association (ALA) report found that "U.S. law enforcement authorities made more than 200 requests for information from libraries since October 2001." The ALA said at the time, "What this says to us is that agents are coming to libraries and they are asking for information at a level that is significant, and the findings are completely contrary to what the Justice Department has been trying to convince the public." The compromise sunsets the Patriot Act's infamous "library provisions" in four years, but will not tighten the standards the government needs to subpoena personal information. The government can still obtain personal data merely by showing "relevance" to a terrorism investigation.



Under the Radar

HOMELAND SECURITY -- 80,000 NAMES ON U.S. TERRORIST WATCHLIST: The U.S. "no-fly" list used for pre-flight checks of airline passengers is now 80,000 names long. The list had just 16 names before Sept. 11, 2001, 1,000 names at the end of 2001, then jumped to 40,000 names a year later. But not all 80,000 people on this terrorist watchlist may belong there. In March 2004, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was stopped and questioned five times because his name appeared on the government's list; it took him more than 3 weeks to get his name removed. Similarly, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) has been detained before boarding flights -- and sometimes even after he boarded the plane -- because his name was also on the secretive list.

HUMAN RIGHTS -- BOLTON ATTACKS U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is commemorating International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10) by denouncing individuals who are working to uphold human rights. Bolton has attacked Louise Arbour, the U.N. human rights chief for her comments that the "absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice...is becoming a casualty of the so-called 'war on terror,'" singling out reports of U.S. practices of torture on detainees. Bolton countered that it is "inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second guess the conduct that we're engaged in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers." Secretary General Kofi Annan backed up Arbour, saying he had "no disagreement" with her comments and he "is confident that she will carry out her work without being impressed or intimidated by what happened."

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- BUSH'S DEMOCRACY CALL RINGS HOLLOW IN ARAB WORLD: A poll carried out by the Arab American Institute in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates found that the Arab world's opinion of the U.S. seems to have hardened over the past year, due primarily to opposition to the Iraq war and perceptions of U.S. treatment of Arabs and Muslims. AAI president James Zogby said, "Of the four percent in Egypt and nine percent in Saudi Arabia who said that 'President Bush's promotion of democracy and reform' was the most important factor determining their attitudes toward the U.S., over 80 percent said this effort worsened their view of the U.S."

LABOR -- JOINING A UNION BECOMING MORE DANGEROUS: A new report released by American Rights at Work shows that a majority of employers are aggressively using both legal and illegal anti-union tactics before union representation votes to undermine union support. Thirty percent of employers fire pro-union workers, 82 percent hire high-priced "unionbusting" consultants, and 91 percent of employers force employees to have one-on-one anti-union meetings with their supervisors. The report concludes that "union membership in the United States is not declining because workers no longer want, need, or attempt to form unions [but] is related to employers’ systematic use of legal and illegal tactics to stymie union organizing." American Progress is also engaged in an international campaign to promote human rights and a decent work agenda through Global Progress.

IRAQ -- AL QAEDA DETAINEE'S FALSE STATEMENTS WERE MADE WHILE IN EGYPTIAN CUSTODY: In November, the New York Times revealed that an al Qaeda official whose statements formed the foundation for the false claim that Iraq trained al Qaeda to use biological and chemical weapons was known to be a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency in early 2002. Today, the Times adds further details to the story. The false claims by the al Qaeda prisoner were made while he was in Egyptian custody. "The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts." The detainee claimed that he had been treated harshly while in Egyptian custody.