America’s local war on terror is, in reality, a war on civil liberties. The creation of post-September 11th policies such as the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Bill provide little protection to Americans. They do, however, provide the American government with new powers over the American people, powers that are simply unconstitutional. The creation of these documents has left the door open to civil injustices that make a mockery of this country’s founding ideals. Overall, this sacrifice of civil liberties provides little enhancement to protect against dangerous terrorist attacks. In time, these sacrifices may end up in vein, as the country finds itself weaker then it originally was.

Directly after September 11th, President Bush declared the War on Terror. As part of this ongoing war, the American government created legislation to define, combat and react to the threat of domestic terrorism. On October 26th, 2001 the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law. The law’s short title stands for `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism’. As declared within itself, the Patriot Act is an act “To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.” The Patriot Act was the first of the post-September 11th laws that held an aim at defending the American public, but not nearly the last. The creation of the Patriot Act also created a need for a government agency to make significant use of the new law. This new agency ended up being a completely new branch of the government. On November 25th, 2002 the Homeland Security Act was signed by President Bush. As stated within itself, the Homeland Security Act is “An Act to establish the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], and for other purposes.” Reiterating most of the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act also creates a new branch of the government, Homeland Security, which is a consolidation of twenty-two existing federal agencies. As of now, the creation of the DHS is the biggest government undertaking since World War Two. With the budgets of twenty-two federal agencies, a cumulative of thirty-five billion dollars, the DHS has also become one of the largest chunks of our nation’s budget.

Together these acts promise Americans greater protection against a terrorist threat. While the Patriot Act does not create any physical methods for combating terrorism, it does create pathways for agencies to expand their power. In short, the Patriot Act opened the door for the existence of the DHS. The DHS is designed to act as a central command center for information that could be used to combat terrorism. In essence, a federal agency, under the DHS, will report its finding to the DHS for that information to be processed and sent to other agencies under the DHS. The hope is to create a faster means of exchanging information, something agencies like the FBI and CIA came under criticism for after September 11th. It is also the job of the DHS to collect all information on attack scenarios, assess data and create plans incase of a domestic terror attack. Alert Technology Corporation, creators of OpsCenter, an electronic system for tracking and sharing homeland security information, state that “Knowing that you have all of the needed risk mitigation plans, status of resources and incident reports at your fingertips, you can confidently face the task of responding to the incident” It is the DHS’s goal to make Alert’s statement come true.

“The department [DHS] would be divided into four parts: Border and Transportation Security; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures; and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection.” (cnn.com) All four parts fall under the control of Secretary Tom Ridge, the appointed head of the DHS. It is his job to ensure that each part of the DHS does its designated job and, incase of an emergency situation, he has complete control over what actions must be taken. Of the four parts of the DHS, Border and Transportation Security seems to have the largest job to undertake. “One of the department’s main focuses will be on U.S. borders, where it will attempt to screen out would-be attackers without slowing down some 500 million people, more than 11 million trucks, 51,000 foreign ships and 2.2 million rail cars that enter the country each year.” (Connolly) The division of Border and Transportation Security is also attempting to add biometric seniors to airports enabling them to detect terrorists entering the country.

The Homeland Security Act and, to some extent, the Patriot Act promises to combat terrorism by creating methods of preventing and responding to it. Yet, the infectiveness of the legislation and the simple bureaucratic nature of the DHS, seem to state otherwise. The DHS is a bureaucracy in more ways then one. The DHS is made up of twenty-two federal agencies; Tom Ridge has no actual control over each agency. Ridge can only make suggestions to the federal agencies, each agency is completely independent. According to Dave McIntyre, director of research at the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, “He [Ridge] can’t stand at the top of the system and direct how county sheriffs conduct their training.” The order, that created Ridges job, defines it as coordinating the work of federal agencies, not directing them. Ridge has real power in emergency situations but not very much in taking action for preventing them. If agencies do listen to what he has to say, he is faced with another problem. Ridge has no power to distribute money. If Ridge determines that border security needs to be raised, he can tell the appropriate agencies to raise it, but he can not give them extra money for actually completing the task. In the case of border security, more agents and tools would be needed, both of which cost money. It’s not enough for Ridge to tell agencies to shape up, if he does not have the means of shaping them up. Senator Robert Byrd called the Homeland Security Act a game of “bureaucratic shuffle board”. In many ways, he was right. Beyond not having the ability to control or fund the agencies of the DHS, Ridge, as former Defense Department official Michele Flournoy puts it “…doesn’t have the authority to redirect resources between agencies”. Agencies Ridge is supposed to be coordinating. In addition, the network of twenty-two federal agency under the DNS doesn’t include the FBI or the CIA, two of the government’s most valuable intelligence agencies.

Currently, the total funds of the DHS are thirty-five billion dollars, all of which comes from individual agency budgets. However, it is estimated that, in order to be effective, the DHS will require over two to three times its current funds. Money, congress has not put aside yet. The extra money would be used for overhauling the current twenty-two agencies, adding new agents, acquiring new technologies and increasing security. This increase in security would be for airports, research facilities, nuclear power plants, electric facilities, shipping yards and, most controversial of all, private biasness that the public relies on.

Part of the DHS funds will be going to increase security in privately run corporations, corporations that could afford their own security. In addition, corporations getting government money do not have to relay their security plans to the government, or the materials within their facilities. In essence, the government will be giving the corporations money and telling them they should spend it on security. Many groups and agencies have stood up against this, most notably, the EPA, which asked for the Corzine-Jeffords amendment. A bill approved unanimously in July by the Senate, that required chemical firms to provide the government with security plans and to draft new plans to respond to flaws found in their old plans. This bill require firms to keep top notch security, however, the Homeland Security Act circumvented this bill by allowing corporations to do what they want (Washington Times).

Under the Patriot Act, the government gets new broader powers to fight terrorism. Among these powers, the government’s restrictions on electronic surveillance have been limited. Before the Patriot Act, using a person’s email or web habits in court, against them, required a warrant. Under the Patriot Act, Section 216, government attorneys only have to certify that information, used in court, was obtained through a process “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.” This section also extends a single warrant (telephone, email, etc…) to “contents of any wire or electronic communications.” Section 213 leads to another extended power through roaming wiretaps. Originally, a court order or warrant, for monitoring a person’s phone connection, was limited to that person’s sole telephone connection. However, under the provision of roaming wiretaps, one warrant allows for the monitoring of every telephone said person could have access to. Of all the powers given to the government, by the Patriot Act, the greatest is the ability to hold suspects for an indefinite amount of time. Originally, any suspect who was not read their rights or charged with a crime could only be held for a maximum of 24 hours. Under the Patriot Act, this period of 24 hours has been extended to 48 hours or an uncapped additional reasonable period of time (Chang). Many people believe that the ability to hold people, without trail, or reading them their rights, goes against the Miranda Laws (Chang).

Does the Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act provide ample protection for the American way of life? Could they also be destroying it? What is domestic terrorism? The Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism in many different ways. One of the most interesting definitions is given under section 802, which sates domestic terrorism as, those actions that “appear to be intended… to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” All non-violent forms of protest fall under this definition of terrorism. Actions which change mass-opinion are considered coercion, and the gathering of people is considered intimidation by the opposing force.

Another provision of the Patriot Act, which comes under question, is its allowance for “sneak and peek searches” (section 213). This provision allows for the delayed notice of federal search warrants. Officers are now allowed to entire a person’s house, when they are knowingly away, seize evidence, and not notify the person for the increment of time that officer feels is necessary. This provision does more then violate a persons 4th amendment right, it also goes against the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which states under Rule41(d), “The officer taking property under the warrant shall give to the person from whom or from whose premises the property was taken a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken or shall leave the copy and receipt at the place from which the property was taken.”

Civil rights come under attack throughout the Homeland Security Act. There are hidden provisions that negatively affect the mass public of America. Section 304, subsection C, contains a provision that allows the secretary of Human Health Services (HHS) to order mandatory immunization against small-pox, without congresses consent. The provision continues to state that persons harmed, or the families of people who have died because of this order, cannot sue or take any other civil remedy. Mandatory immunizations are concerning for healthy people, but even more concerning for people who have immune deficiency’s, such as HIV, AIDS. Since the smallpox vaccine contains a live virus, people with immune deficiencies have small chances of surviving the immunization process.

The Homeland Security Act’s most notorious hidden provision is one calling for the protection of Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, has come under fire for using a chemical called thimerosal, in children’s vaccines. Thimerosal, derived from mercury, was an additive to children’s vaccines from the 1920’s all the way through the summer of 1999, when the Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service urged vaccine manufacturers to stop using thimerosal as quickly as possible (Bob Herbert). Recently, research has started to prove that thimerosal causes neurological damage in young children. In response, many families, whose children show signs of thimerosal poisoning, have brought lawsuits against Eli Lilly, the company that developed thimerosal. Unfortunately, the new Homeland Security Act contains a provision which denies these families from suing Eli Lilly, and other companies that used thimerosal. Apparently, no government official has claimed responsibility for adding this provision, or released knowledge on how this provision got into the Homeland Security Act. Bob Herbert of the New York Times has his own opinion.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the major drug companies have become a gigantic collective cash machine for politicians, and that the vast majority of that cash goes to Republicans… Or maybe it's related to the fact that Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, is a former Eli Lilly big shot. Or the very convenient fact that just last June President Bush appointed Eli Lilly's chairman, president and C.E.O., Sidney Taurel, to a coveted seat on the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council.

The list of civil injustices goes on, but aren’t Americans willing to sacrifice some of these freedoms for their safety? In sort, some Americans are, but that is not what they are getting. The provisions of post-September 11th law do a good job of combating organized action against the government, but can these new laws stop an individual man willing to kill others, at the cost of himself? Recently, the American public has dealt with new forms of terrorism, such as, the D.C. sniper who killed over a dozen people, over the period of weeks. The public has dealt with a crazy individual, or group of individuals, that sent anthrax to citizen’s homes and never got caught. Or the most infamous of all, Osama bin Laden, who the government says is responsible for the events of September 11th. Did we ever catch him? Will widening the government’s powers actually fight this form of terrorism? If this is not the correct method of action, are we weakening ourselves by putting so many resources into it? By selling out our civil rights? After September 11th, people started saying that these terrorists were trying to destroy our way of life, our democracy. The real question to ask is who is destroying our democracy; the terrorists or ourselves? Our own government has declared a war on terrorism when, in reality, terrorism still exists and our freedoms are less then they were before. This is not what is meant to happen in a democracy. Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the American constitution, stated “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." Our security is bred into our freedom, without one the other can not exist. Therefore a war on terrorism that takes away our freedoms is, in reality, taking away our security.

Works Cited

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