President Bush is stumping for many provisions of the original Patriot Act to be not only renewed before expiring at the end of 2005, but permanent fixtures in the American legislative landscape. Bush argues that these provisions have all but singlehandedly saved America from terrorism, having “closed dangerous gaps in America’s law enforcement and intelligence capabilities” (as quoted in this CNN article).

While Bush is presenting the frightening could-have-been scenarios that were thwarted by the Patriot Act’s presence, however, many civil liberties and privacy advocates continue to argue the potential and real abuses of the Patriot Act’s sweeping power. While the opposition has been hard-pressed to point to specific cases of overreaching authorities, many still argue from a fundamental and constitutional standpoint that the Act should not be renewed. Some Senators are pushing for a scaled-back version of the Patriot Act (see this Wired article). The same article quotes an ACLU senior counsel’s key point: “the lack of a documented case of abuse doesn’t mean the law doesn’t violate civil liberties.”

There is little doubt that in a pre-September 11 world, the Patriot Act would have faced much stronger opposition to its initial passage. However, given the current state of affairs, it’s unclear whether the Congress still feels as strongly about the Act, or whether it’s simply the perceived public momentum still pushing the war on terror, no matter the cost to the average citizen.

Another recent article in the Washington Times suggests that several conservative groups are rallying with the ACLU to oppose the Patriot Act’s renewal and expansion (read more here). The article presents some interesting ideas from conservative opposition, but overall still reads as though this opposition is the exception, not the norm, among conservatives.

I tend to agree with the ACLU here: just because the Patriot Act has not seen any provable abuses does not disprove the possibility of them occurring in the future. I feel as though we’re only more likely to see abuses as time goes on; the war on terror is waning and public sentiment on the matter is slipping back into its general state of inaction.

The recent slew of identity theft and information leakage might help bolster public support for increased privacy protections; whether this might affect the Patriot Act’s passage is hard to discern. I suspect that in the absence of a significant provable abuse, Bush will see his vision of a permanent Patriot Act come to pass.

This entry was posted by Paul Otto (pnotto@ncsu.edu) on Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Government Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Note: Blog posts are the opinions of their authors and do not reflect the official opinion of the National Science Foundation or North Carolina State University.