Thieving The Crumbs Left Of Your Rights

November 3, 2010

Senate measure threatens rights

Samuel R. Kephart

Senate Bill 3081, the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, is proposed by Sen. John McCain and co-sponsored by eight others, including his good friend, Sen. John Thune. It’s been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for review.

It’s appalling that two patriotic men, one who spent five years as a POW of the North Vietnamese and another with professed “heartland values” such as John Thune, could promulgate such an intellectually dishonest, poorly defined, ill-thought-out and blatantly unconstitutional law that shreds the Fifth and Sixth amendments.

S.3081 promises to streamline the identification, capture, interrogation and detention of terrorists and others who represent a clear and present danger to the United States. Further, an ever-increasing number of U.S. citizens at home and abroad wish us harm, so they are included, without distinction, in the bill’s language.

However, S.3081 lacks clear definitions for the operational terms “material support,” “the potential intelligence value of the individual” and the all-inclusive phrase, “such other matters as the President considers appropriate.” It’s a Catch-22 with no way out.

Under this law as written, any U.S. citizen who is a war protester, publicly exhibits anti-government sentiments, is a tea party activist or a political opponent of a given administration could fall (or be made to fall) under one or more of its ill-defined and ambiguous conditions.

If the feds think you are committing a “suspicious activity” or “supporting hostilities,” you can be hauled off and held indefinitely in military custody with neither legal recourse nor due process. Your constitutional rights to free speech and personal liberties would disappear with the stroke of a hidden pen.

Nobly intended to counter growing terrorism, S.3081 offers no controls nor checks and balances to prevent it being used for politically nefarious purposes.

Imagine what Richard Nixon would have done if he’d had such peremptory or discretionary presidential authority. Any of his antagonists, such as Daniel Ellsberg, would have disappeared from sight and been held for questioning for an indefinite period for providing “material support” to the enemy in a time of war.

Assurances I received from a senior Thune staffer that S.3081 is well-intended and necessary don’t cut it. Our federal government offers no moral high ground regarding corruption or outside influence. Should S.3081 pass, no senator or court will have any say over its implementation. It contains zero safeguards to prevent a paranoid and power-hungry president (think Johnson or Nixon), or his or her national security team, from using it to mete out threats or punishment to political enemies, particularly given the exigencies of war or a domestic emergency such as 9-11.

For national security purposes, Americans already are subject to warrantless wiretaps of calls and e-mails, the warrantless GPS “tagging” of their vehicles, the domestic use of Predators or other spy-in-the-sky drones, and the Department of Homeland Security’s monitoring of all our behavior through “data fusion centers.” (Google that. It’s an eye-opener.) Given this toxic mashup of losses of privacy, S.3081 is a slippery slope for civil rights and a horrific abrogation of the Constitution.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then S.3081 is a superhighway to an Orwellian panoptic gulag.

America’s promise always has been the power of the many to rule, instead of the one.

S.3081 returns unilateral power to the one. It’s ill-conceived, elitist and end-runs our inherent constitutional protections.

Founder and framer Benjamin Franklin famously warned: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Or as I now like to say, “Those who fail to watch the pot will end up in it.”

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Sam Kephart, 59, is CEO of Virtual Acumen, a Spearfish-based creative media firm.