Last Thursday, Congress voted to extend key provisions of the PATRIOT Act for an additional four years. President Obama, who had criticized the law as a candidate, promptly signed it – or at least his autopen did. Ever since it was first approved in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks, the legislation has provoked a fierce debate in which the most extreme elements on both sides have done a disservice to national discourse. The PATRIOT Act’s loudest critics, seizing on its Orwellian-sounding name and complexity, have spread all sorts of mythical fears, such as the idea that the government would be trolling through everybody’s library records. Its staunchest defenders have also lashed out at anybody raising concerns about its expansion of government surveillance powers, portraying them as insufficiently supportive of fighting terrorism.
The truth is that the PATRIOT Act has provided America’s law enforcement agencies with key tools to fight terrorism. At the same time, the nation must still be diligent about fighting terrorists in a way that safeguards Constitutional liberties. Over the course of America’s history, Presidents have claimed all sorts of emergency powers during wartime. During the Civil War, under President Lincoln’s command, the Federal government arrested an estimated 14,000 civilians deemed disloyal to the Union, and the postmaster general excluded five New York newspapers from the mail because they were critical of the war. President Woodrow Wilson signed a law during World War I banning “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt interned more than 110,000 Japanese during World War II.
As bad as these violations were, critics of the PATRIOT Act argue that the greater danger of the War on Terror is that it has no clear end point, meaning that the government could be given sweeping powers forever. But the unique nature of the shadowy terrorist enemy also creates special problems for those charged with protecting the nation’s security. The Ft. Hood shooting and the attempted Times Square bombing show that the bigger threat in the future may not be a dramatic, Sept. 11th-style attack, but rather a home grown threat posed by American citizens who either train with terrorist groups overseas or become inspired by radical Islamic ideology. If the government is to stop such attacks ahead of time, it must be given certain policing powers with which civil libertarians may be uncomfortable.
That’s why Congress did the right thing by making the extension temporary. Lawmakers and media watchdogs can continue to monitor the effects of the legislation, and Congress can revisit the law in the future without enshrining opportunities for abuse.
