Pros And Cons Of John Ashcroft

John Ashcroft sees two broad areas of civil liberties as particular weaknesses waiting to be exploited by terrorists, free press and due process rights. He described a seized al Qaeda training manual where "terrorists are told how to use America's freedom as a weapon against us. They are instructed to use the benefits of a free press, newspapers, magazines and broadcasts, to stalk and kill their victims. They are instructed to exploit our judicial process for the success of their operations" (U.S. Senate 2001). The logic is clear: to foil the terrorist plot, the administration must enact antiterrorism measures that ensure greater governmental control of information, fewer procedural protections for people linked to terrorism (as either suspects or material witnesses), and enhanced government surveillance. Not surprisingly, these are the civil liberty encroachments most lamented by policy critics.
Civil liberty concerns raised in federal courts have varied from free speech to dis crimination to criminal procedural rights, as a report from the American Civil Liberties Union illustrates.
Documenting its litigation activities from September 11, 2001 to March 14, 2003, as either a party or a friend of court, the ACLU chronicled thirty cases involving allegations of religious profiling, closed immigration hearings, government refusal to release names of detainees, misuse of material witness warrants, and unsuccessful efforts to obtain government documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The organization has been involved in some of the higher profile challenges to the administration's antiterrorism efforts, including enemy combatant cases, the gag order on the attorney of convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, and the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance search warrants for criminal investigations (ACLU Report
2003).
Not all of the challenges occur in the courthouse. Groups representing both the political left and right have lobbied members of Congress on proposals that they see as particularly troubling. Congress has responded to a limited degree. For example, the Senate did authorize the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project to develop a database to track possible terrorists, but it also provided an advisory oversight committee (Clymer 2003). In addition, outside opposition is mounting to the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, designed to provide instant but potentially invasive background checks on all airline passengers (ACLU Press Release 2003b). Congress also appears wary at this point of the leaked Justice Department proposal named the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (Anderson 2003b; U.S. Senate 2003). Referred to as Patriot II, the measure mobilized such opponents as the Center for Public Integrity and OMB Watch (Lewis and Mayle 2003; OMB Watch 2003).