Hill Panel Examines 'State Of American Freedoms'
Civil liberties and high-tech watchdogs spoke about "the state of American freedoms" on Thursday at a Capitol Hill forum organized by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. The Michigan Democrat said the event, which may become an annual affair, was appropriately scheduled days before the Fourth of July.
Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology argued that as technologies advance, citizens need "more and not fewer privacy protections." When the Constitution was written, there were no telephones or e-mail, he pointed out, and the Internet age has changed everything.
"E-mail lives on," Nojeim said. "The thing that you thought was a private thing, the thing that you wrote that was a private thought, is living out of your control and that's something that you have to come to grips with." Federal laws also need to reflect that reality, he said.
But the current White House has not trended in that direction, Nojeim said. "While more privacy protections are being called for, the administration wants Congress to move in the opposite direction." He was referring indirectly to Bush's hope that lawmakers will revamp a 1978 intelligence law in ways that worry privacy and civil liberties advocates.
Meanwhile, this week's unveiling of the CIA's so-called "family jewels," 703 pages of documents that the agency fought to keep secret for three decades, underscores the need for greater safeguards, he said. When left to their own devices, law enforcement and intelligence officials "do what they think is appropriate for them to carry out their mission, which is not necessarily thinking about and protecting civil rights," he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union's top lobbyist Caroline Frederickson added that "the state of our freedom is fragile." She pointed to the administration's "obsessive and relentless quest for secrecy," which was recently evidenced by Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that he is not part of the executive branch when it comes to a review of his handling of classified documents.
Other panelists included: Marcus Raskin, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies; the NAACP's Hilary Shelton; and Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., spoke out about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "wasn't enacted to protect against hypothetical abuses."
Lee vowed to help "bring back some accountability" in that arena. Fellow committee member Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, added that "terrorism flourishes" when civil liberties are suppressed.
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