Oakland
police officers in riot gear line Frank H. Ogawa plaza, the site of an
Occupy Wall Street encampment, Tuesday, Oct. 25. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Is our Constitution under siege?
Many civil liberties advocates fear it might be. They’re worried
about a provision tucked into the 2012 National Defense Authorization
Act, approved by the Senate last week, that would
allow the military to detain without a trial any American citizen accused of being a terrorist, or of supporting terrorists who plot attacks against the United States. The ACLU
called the proposal “an extreme position that will forever change our country.”
The indefinite detention provision is just one of many trends in
policing and law enforcement that have civil liberties advocates
alarmed. New external threats, as well as technological advancements,
are posing new challenges to our Constitutional rights, advocates say.
Policymakers are debating those issues in Congress and in the courts
right now, and the decisions they make could have fundamental
consequences for what it means to be an American.
Here are five issues that are especially worrisome to civil liberties watchdogs:
1. Indefinite military detentions of U.S. citizens
The provision, part of the bill that authorizes Pentagon spending for
2012, was drafted by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Sen. John McCain
of Arizona, and has bipartisan support in the Senate. The thinking,
according to supporters, is that “America is part of the battlefield” in
the so-called war on terror, as Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire put
it, so Americans should be fair game when it comes to finding and
arresting terrorists.
The bill, however, takes the power to arrest and detain terrorists
away from law enforcement officials, like the police or FBI, and gives
it to the military, which, under the law,
would have the power to imprison an American
who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated
forces” indefinitely, “without trial until the end of the hostilities.”
And those hostilities aren’t likely to “end” any time soon, since the
law that authorizes the use of military force against terrorists has no
expiration date.
2. Targeting U.S. citizens for killing
Last week, lawyers for the Obama administration
defended for the first time the administration’s decision to target radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, for killing. Awlawki, who was born in New Mexico,
was killed in an American missile strike
in September; the ACLU has criticized the targeted killing program as
blatantly violating the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that no
American citizen shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.”
At a national security conference last week, the lawyers for the
Obama administration, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon
counsel Jeh Johnson, said American citizens are legitimate targets for
killing when they take up arms against the U.S., according to the
Associated Press. Jameel Jaffer, a deputy legal director for the ACLU,
said in an interview in September
that the targeted killing program sets up a precedent in which “U.S.
citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own
government.”
3. Arresting witnesses for recording police actions
The raids at Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country have
earned media attention primarily for their glaring instances of police
brutality. But they’ve also tested the boundaries of police authority
when it comes to limiting media access to police operations. As many as
30 journalists have been arrested covering Occupy protests, including many who
clearly identified themselves
as credentialed members of the media. Officials in New York and L.A.,
for example, have also tried to tightly restrict media access to the
Occupy encampments, setting up barricades far away from the actual raids
and
allowing only hand-picked journalists to go behind police lines.
Civil liberties advocates have decried these tactics as attempts to
stifle media coverage of the raids. But the media blackouts are
representative of a broader trend in law enforcement in recent years in
which the police have been
arresting citizens simply for recording official police actions
in public places. Twelve states, for example, have adopted
“eavesdropping” laws that prohibit people from videotaping police
actions without the officers’ consent. And in California, police
officials have
openly stated that they will arrest people taking photographs without “apparent esthetic value” if those people seem suspicious. Several
courts have ruled these policies unconstitutional.
4. Using GPS to track your every move
The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule soon on a case that could have
far-reaching consequences for privacy in the 21st Century. The justices
were asked to decide
whether the police could use GPS devices to track people suspected of crimes
without first obtaining a warrant. Police across the country use GPS
devices to track the movements of thousands of criminal suspects every
year, but critics say the practice violates the Fourth Amendment
prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
In oral arguments in November, several justices expressed concern
that, as technology improves, the power to track a U.S. citizens’ every
move would only become more dangerous. “If you win this case, then there
is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24
hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States,”
Justice Stephen Breyer told the lawyer for the Justice Department, which
is defending warrantless GPS tracking. That, Breyer added, “sounds like
’1984.’”
5. Surveillance drones spying on American soil
The use of drones to spy on states like Pakistan and Iran has become
so popular in national security circles that many domestic law
enforcement agencies are now
considering using these spy planes to conduct covert surveillance on American soil. Drones are already used to
patrol the U.S.-Mexico border,
but now many police officials across the country are advocating for the
use of drones in other types of police actions, like hunting fugitives,
finding missing children and monitoring protest movements.
These drones, advocates note, can not only
monitor large urban expanses,
they can also use artificial intelligence “seek out and record certain
types of suspicious behavior,” whatever that may be. The Orlando police,
for example, initially
requested two spy drones
to help police the Republican National Convention next year, before
changing their minds for budgetary reasons. Some police officials have
even
openly discussed arming the spy planes with “non-lethal weapons” like Tasers or bean bag guns.
These drones, and other tactics imported from battlefield to American
soil, are an example of how the “war on terror” has threatened core
protections guaranteed to American citizens by the Constitution, civil
liberties advocates say. The erosion of these protections has been
supported by both Democrats and Republicans alike. And, as the ACLU put
it, the debate over these tactics “goes to the very heart of who we are
as Americans.”
