Wizblog

Patriot Act Debate

A lot of ink has been spilled in the major media in recent weeks about the Patriot Act, much of it in derision of John Ashcroft's cross-country tour designed to counter growing criticism of some of the act's provisions. Rich Lowry claims that among other critics, "over-the-top editorial writers" have "whipped up a dangerous hysteria". It's a good piece that gets into more detail of actual specifics of the Patriot Act than one finds in some of the aforementioned editorials, like this one in the NY Times. Lowry says:

The challenge to critics should be this: Name one civil liberty that has been violated under the Patriot Act. They can't, which is why they instead rely on hyperbole in an increasingly successful effort to make the Patriot Act a dirty phrase.

Ashcroft defended the legislation on The Capital Gang this past Saturday, but in fact there have been specific and substantive criticisms of the Patriot Act that cannot all be dismissed as hysteria and hyperbole, as Lowry suggests.

While the press and the political left seems to concentrate on the scaremongering and Bush/Ashcroft bashing, much of the seriousness and actual analysis of threats to civil rights comes from the libertarian right and the high tech industrial sector.

Jacob Sullum of Reason Online spells out some of those concerns, (and links to ACLU statements on the legislation). And the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in an older article, zeroes in on the ways that the Patriot Act impacts online activities and the broader "Digital World".

And Robert Bork had his July Commentary essay, Civil Liberties After 9/11 reprinted at OpinionJournal.com this week, if you're interested in a detailed, thoughtful and scholarly look at the issue. It should be required reading for Congressmen before they act on the Act.