[Excerpt from OPC newsletter 2001-09-17:]

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Civil Liberty the Next Casualty?

In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, scholars fear that Americans will sacrifice civil liberties that could be difficult to win back.

Many civil liberties watchdogs say freedom in the United States have been slowly eroding for the past several decades. But they say Tuesday's attacks will redouble efforts by the government to infringe on civil freedoms, and now people won't resist.

Internet service providers have reported that they are working with the FBI to monitor traffic, something they were reluctant to do before.

Airport security spokespeople say future passengers should expect random checks, no curbside check-in and closer scrutiny.

"That's unlikely to deter trained, determined and suicidal terrorists, but it will further subject innocent Americans to arbitrary power," said J.D. Tucille, a writer and editor in Arizona who focuses on civil liberties.

John Perry Barlow, a Beckman fellow at Harvard Law School and co- founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote a mass e-mail on Tuesday encouraging Americans to hold on to their freedoms by writing public officials, joining the American Civil Liberties Union or the EFF, "to prevent the control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last 225 years than died this morning."

Tucille said planned surveillance over private communications, with only a small chance of catching something, is a gamble not worth taking.

"We could start opening people's envelopes on the off-chance that we'll find something, because inevitably we will," Tucille said. "But in the process of catching something we'll make this country a much less pleasant place to live."

He believes the American people should be skeptical of attempts by the FBI to come in to save the day.

"Before all of this happened, the FBI was becoming a pariah, and I believe for a good reason. There are reasons why these organizations tend to abuse power and we should not ask them to protect us. They can't."

Security experts also encouraged American citizens to protect their free way of life.

"We live in an open society and it's very difficult to control people and control threats and manage risk when you have the openness that we have in this country," said Don Ulsch of the Ulsch Group, a security consultancy in Lancaster, Massachusetts. "We should not have the knee-jerk reaction of suggesting that we live in any other way."

The goal of terrorism, Barlow wrote, is to paralyze the American government by encouraging totalitarianism.

"Don't give them the satisfaction," Barlow wrote. "Fear nothing. Live free."

He compared Tuesday's attack to the burning of the Reichstag that led to the Nazi takeover of the German government in 1933.

"Nothing could serve those who believe that American 'safety' is more important than American liberty better than something like this," Barlow wrote.

That's not to say that anyone believes the United States should simply turn the other cheek. Instead, Barlow suggested in an interview the government organize new teams of anti-terrorists, since our present intelligence agencies are "stupefyingly incompetent."

He also suggested equipping airliners with biometric sensors that could detect the wrong hands on the yoke, a plainclothes cop on every flight armed with a rapid-fire, paralyzing dart gun or making it impossible to open cockpit doors from the outside and armor-plating them with Kevlar.

"I think we can be creative about this," Barlow said. "I don't hear anyone calling for subtler and nimbler thinking. All I hear are calls for a bigger hammer and a readier willingness to use it."

Others condoned retaliation, but emphasized that a guilty party must be identified beyond the shadow of a doubt, followed by swift and powerful retaliation.

"We need to send the message we are an open and benevolent society, but we will defend ourselves," Ulsch said.

They also pointed out that there's a difference between justice and revenge. They worry about the rights of those who some may think are responsible for the terrorism, or may simply look like the guilty people.

In addition, Barlow and Tucille think the United States should take a long hard look at why the country is targeted so often by terrorists.

"We blunder around the world in other peoples' foreign policy," Tucille said. "That doesn't mean there's justice in this striking activity. But it makes a reason to pick us as a target."

COMMENT: If America does in fact become a totalitarian state ruled by Big Brother and wracked by all the internal evils associated with totalitarian rule, then the terrorist will have succeeded in destroying America beyond their wildest dreams.

America was founded on the principles of freedom and limited government. Both were already in jeopardy before the terrorist attacks, and now they might be obliterated by panicked, unreasoning citizens who will be unable to see what they're doing to their own freedom until it's too late.

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