The legendary Studs Terkel has a fascinating NYT op-ed today, noting the trend over the last several generations about the way that “politically active Americans view their relationship with government” — and the way the government views politically active Americans.
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, one’s 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. […]
By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the Vietnam war spurred social justice movements. The government’s 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.
Like Brian Beutler, at this point in the piece, I started to think that perhaps Terkel was making an unexpected point — that as troubling as the Bush administration’s surveillance techniques have been, at least (as far as we know right now) his efforts of spying on Americans haven’t been quite as offensive as generations past.
But that really wasn’t Terkel’s point at all. It’s not that we’ve made progress, it’s that we’ve come full circle.
The Church Commission in 1975 exposed the dramatic excesses of government surveillance of private citizens and lawful organizations. Three years later, Congress passed FISA, which placed some common-sense restrictions on the government’s power.
Then Bush took office.
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 “get out of jail free card” 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 it’s 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.
Terkel concludes that the public, if given the facts, will reject these excesses. I’m less optimistic. Among Americans in general, fear is a powerful motivator for tolerating unchecked domestic surveillance. Among lawmakers, the desire to avoid appearing “soft” is equally strong.
Time will certainly tell — and the end result of the new FISA bill will help answer the question.