Terrorists' Rights Versus Crime Prevention

Rachel Alexander
Monday, January 05, 2009

Civil libertarians, including prominent conservatives like Rep. Ron Paul and former Rep. Bob Barr, have made loud objections to the U.S. government’s efforts to counteract terrorism in the wake of 9-11.

In particular, they have protested the detainment and interrogation methods used on suspected terrorists at Gitmo, wiretapping, and other methods of surveillance. They don’t represent the majority of Americans, many who privately say anyone involved with terrorism should be executed.

They don’t dare say this publicly since the law has evolved over time to provide those accused of crimes certain privileges, labeling them “rights.” While some of these “rights” make sense in order to prevent the government from falsely imprisoning innocent people, at some point there is a line where these specified additional “rights” for suspected terrorists begin to infringe upon the rights of innocent Americans. How these terrorists’ “rights” have been created and defined has mostly been decided in the U.S. courts by judges, not by Congress, by overturning legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President. Considering the judiciary is controlled by the left, and considering our Founding Fathers as a representative body wrote the Constitution establishing our rights, it is disturbing that a few lone judges are now deciding what our rights – and the “rights” of terrorists - are.

Since the 1960’s, liberal activist judges have created so many new “rights” for criminals that it has become very difficult to get information out of accused terrorists or detain them for very long. It’s a vicious cycle – law enforcement is no longer permitted to get information from suspected terrorists unless they coddle them, read them their right to remain silent, and supply them with a U.S. taxpayer-funded attorney to represent them, etc. Without the ability to obtain any information from them, it becomes difficult to justify detaining them without violating their (new) “rights.” So even though we all know the Guantanamo detainees have been aiding and abetting terrorists whose sole goal in life is to kill U.S. citizens, we pretend that the U.S. Constitution includes all these additional “rights” for terrorists and their aiders and abettors, ultimately enabling them to continue their attacks upon U.S. citizens.

Many of the anti-terrorism methods being attacked by civil libertarians involve new methods and areas of communication never addressed nor contemplated by the Constitution or Congress. Claims that our freedoms are gradually being eroded by the government’s attempts to deal with terrorism are inaccurate since these new areas had never been established as constitutional rights for those accused of terrorist activity. Cell phones have only come into existence in recent years. Torture has only become broadly defined in recent years, so attempting to claim that certain interrogation measures are “unconstitutional” is nothing more than another attempt to broaden what defines “torture.” Congress has passed laws attempting to reconcile changing technologies with the Fourth Amendment’s vague general protection against “unreasonable” searches and seizures – emphasis on unreasonable. Left-leaning civil liberties activists seem to forget the word “unreasonable” in their efforts to apply the Fourth Amendment to new Congressional law in these areas.

In the legal arena generally, there are myriads of exceptions to judicially-carved out Fourth Amendment rights. For example, there is no absolute right to be free of wiretapping regardless of who you are, there is always some way to get an emergency order authorizing one.

Civil liberties activists contend that the government will abuse its power through surveillance programs, and so they demand that any surveillance authorized have a proven link between the suspect being monitored and terrorist activity or organizations. While this sounds good in theory, it does not take into account the fact that terrorists deliberately try to avoid scrutiny by disguising overt connections through the use of third parties and misleading names.

Another criticism of left wing civil liberties activists is that the surveillance is authorized to search communications within the U.S., not just overseas. Again, this doesn’t take into account reality, which is that many terrorists are now operating within the U.S. as sleeper cells, and others have friendly enablers in the U.S. helping them coordinate their attacks. All of the 9-11 hijackers were in the U.S.

A better approach would be give the laws on terrorism as drafted by Congress a chance, and then if an abuse does occur, where the government spies on someone with no connections to terrorism, revisit the law and determine what changes should be made to prevent those abuses. There will always be areas where the government can overreach, we can never get rid of the possibility of human error in any area ever. It’s simply not possible to eliminate this variable. So to proactively restrict the government’s power in this arena beyond current limitations would seriously cripple the ability of the government to protect us from terrorists. As long as the U.S. is the freest democracy in the world, there is little chance that our government is going to turn against its citizens and spy on them. As long as we have free elections and are electing free market, pro-democracy leaders, these kinds of abuses are unlikely and would be an exception should they occur.

When critics say that terrorist prevention “weakens our civil liberties,” what do they mean? It means in that person’s opinion, any laws being drafted to address the new technologies and methods involved in terrorism should allow the government very little latitude to stop terrorism, and an activist court needs to declare in an official sounding manner using plenty of legalese that there is a correlation between greatly restricting government’s ability to stop terrorism and the vague phrases “protecting your constitutional rights” and “civil liberties.”

It is good that we have watchdog groups looking out for our rights and liberties. But their interest in determining what constitutes “rights” needs to be balanced against the interests of Americans who are entitled to life, liberty and happiness as provided by the Declaration of Independence. Failing to take precautions to prevent another 9-11 due to politically correct notions about terrorists’ “rights” tramples on the rights of innocent Americans.