NP spilling more blood to defend freedom?

[Doug Millison]

Re that "freedom" that we're supposed to sacrifice our
children, or our neighbor's children, to defend, you
might also go back and re-read GR.


----


HOLT UNCENSORED

To New Readers: "Holt Uncensored" is a free online
column about books
and the book industry written by former San Francisco
Chronicle book
editor and critic Pat Holt. To subscribe or
"unsubscribe," send note to
pat at holtuncensored.com

Contents for Holt Uncensored #267
Tuesday, September 25, 2001

THE STATE OF CENSORSHIP
	After September 11
	Before September 11
	Judy Blume's Story
LETTERS

--------

THE STATE OF CENSORSHIP

It seems fitting during this Banned Books Week to look
at the matter of 
censorship and its chilling Before-and-After quality. 

Gad, let's start with After September 11, 2001.

Every indication from Congress to the White House is
that during this 
"state of war," Americans will have to trade civil
rights protections 
for national security. 

Not everyone agrees. In an article called "The Big
Lie," Brigid 
McMenamin writes in Forbes magazine that Americans
need not "sacrifice 
their liberty to achieve safety." [See 
http://www.forbes.com/2001/09/17/0917lie.html ]

"Take the bill passed by the Senate two days after the
attack," writes 
McMenamin. "It would permit police to tape phones and
seize Internet 
records without a search warrant. That would leave
Americans vulnerable 
to even greater evils."

The question is whether the government is "trying to
exploit a crisis 
for illicit purposes," says Forbes, as it did in 1996,
when 
"antiterrorist laws [were] inspired by the bombing of
the Federal 
building in Oklahoma City." 

At that point, the government was allowed to "take
advantage of these 
tragedies," says Timothy Lynch, a constitutional law
expert.  
"Sacrificing rights didn't work then," Mcmenamin
concludes, "and it's 
dishonest for law enforcement to pretend that waiving
civil rights now 
will work, either."   

Laws and procedures are already in effect that give
federal and local 
agencies a wide berth during anti-terrorism
investigations, says John 
Gibeaut in his report for the American Bar
Association. There Gibeaut 
describes a two-pronged threat - 1) "adding
terrorism-related offenses 
and broader wiretapping powers to the same law used to
fight mobsters 
and drug dealers, commonly called Title III," and 2)
wide surveillance 
powers granted for up to one year before a court order
is required under 
FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [See 

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/civil.html .]

All of this ushers in a new era of censorship and
invasion of privacy, 
writes John Leonard at Salon.com, through "roving
wiretap legislation,  
e-mail and other Internet peeping rights, detention
and deportation of 
aliens based on secret evidence, and a gutting of
statutes of 
limitation, not to mention the unleashing of the CIA
to hire its own 
gang of thugs and to resume assassinating foreign
leaders we don't 
like."  [ See 
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/21/networks/index.html
.]

Not only is Congress "falling all over itself to give
Attorney General 
John Ashcroft most of what he wants," Leonard
contends, new technology 
is leading the way. 

It may not be long before everyone will be required to
carry national ID 
"smart" cards, writes Leonard, "capable of tracking
our criminal 
history, our bodily motions, our financial
transactions, and our driving 
speed." Then there are the "biometrics of
fingerprinting, voice 
recognition, retinal scans and racial profiling, not
only at airports, 
but at train stations, sports stadiums, parks, schools
and reservoirs."

Who knows if any of it will "work" in terms of
fighting terrorism? The 
only thing we know for sure is that a new and bigger
Big Brother is 
right in front of us.

The most profound effect has already happened, Leonard
indicates: 
Restricted freedoms create an atmosphere of censorship
that stills 
dissent. During the last two weeks, Americans saw a
parade of experts 
talking about the catastrophe of September 11, but
"what we didn't see," 
writes Leonard, "was any meaningful dissent from the
tom-toms. End of 
dialogue. 

"We are apparently supposed to shut up and eat our
spinach. Asking 
questions, proposing alternatives, making
distinctions, arguing 
analogies, remembering history or criticizing our
stand-tall president 
is for the moment unpatriotic and maybe even unmanly.
Wave that flag, 
stuff that qualm."  [...]


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