Dan Gillmor’s Sunday column presents a pessimistic view of the future of civil liberties. While civil liberties have ebbed and flowed in past wars, the permanent “war on terrorism,” which lacks any kind of victory condition, seems unlikely to ever reliquinish the Constitutional rights that have been claimed in its name.
The Bush administration’s attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.
You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks.