[Infowarrior] - OpEd: The Wiretap This Time

[Richard Forno]

Op-Ed Contributor
The Wiretap This Time

By STUDS TERKEL
Published: October 29, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29terkel.html

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House
agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the
electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed
to ³immunize² American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after
9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the
Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those
lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and
millions of other Americans, our day in court.

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically
active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my
youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were
rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or
belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign
policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations
leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation ‹ the
forerunner to the F.B.I. ‹ eventually created a database on the activities
of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.

In the 1950s, during the sad period known as the McCarthy era, one¹s
political beliefs again served as a rationale for government monitoring.
Individual corporations and entire industries were coerced by government
leaders into informing on individuals and barring their ability to earn a
living.

I was among those blacklisted for my political beliefs. My crime? I had
signed petitions. Lots of them. I had signed on in opposition to Jim Crow
laws and poll taxes and in favor of rent control and pacifism. Because the
petitions were thought to be Communist-inspired, I lost my ability to work
in television and radio after refusing to say that I had been ³duped² into
signing my name to these causes.

By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the Vietnam
war spurred social justice movements. The government¹s response? More
surveillance. In the name of national security, the F.B.I. conducted
warrantless wiretaps of political activists, journalists, former White House
staff members and even a member of Congress.

Then things changed. In 1975, the hearings led by Senator Frank Church of
Idaho revealed the scope of government surveillance of private citizens and
lawful organizations. As Americans saw the damage, they reached a consensus
that this unrestrained surveillance had a corrosive impact on us all.

In 1978, with broad public support, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, which placed national security investigations, including
wiretapping, under a system of warrants approved by a special court. The law
was not perfect, but as a result of its enactment and a series of subsequent
federal laws, a generation of Americans has come to adulthood protected by a
legal structure and a social compact making clear that government will not
engage in unbridled, dragnet seizure of electronic communications.

The Bush administration, however, tore apart that carefully devised legal
structure and social compact. To make matters worse, after its intrusive
programs were exposed, the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committee
proposed a bill that legitimized blanket wiretapping without individual
warrants. The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of
the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before
reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its
citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and
what it expects to find.

Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to
provide a ³get out of jail free card² to the telephone companies that
violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this
law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a
time of crisis. But it¹s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of
these companies or to know how the government will use the private
information it received from them.

And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that
their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal district court in
San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, noted that in an
opinion in one of the immunity provision lawsuits the ³very action in
question has previously been held unlawful.²

I have observed and written about American life for some time. In truth,
nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given
the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the
right thing. By revealing the truth in a public forum, the American people
will have the facts to play their historic, heroic role in putting our
nation back on the path toward freedom. That is why we deserve our day in
court.

Studs Terkel is the author of the forthcoming ³Touch and Go: A Memoir.²