The White House and Department of Justice asked Congress this week to grant them new powers to combat terrorism.
“Every day that passes with outdated statutes and the old rules of engagement—each day that so passes is a day that terrorists have a competitive advantage,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said before the House Committee on the Judiciary. “Until Congress makes these changes, we are fighting an unnecessarily uphill battle.”
Ashcroft said the threat of attack has not passed and urged members of Congress to act on his proposals soon.
“The danger that darkened the United States of America and the civilized world on Sept.11 did not pass with the atrocities committed that day,” Ashcroft said. “Terrorism is a clear and present danger to Americans today.”
Ashcroft wants to ease restrictions on wiretaps and search warrant requests.
Currently wiretap authority is restricted to a piece of property, like a phone, instead of the person or group the government is investigating. Easing these restrictions would allow law enforcement to gather intelligence on a person without having to get new legal wiretap authority every time a suspect changes phones or uses alternative modes of communication, like e-mail or voicemail.
The proposal would also allow an order issued by a single federal court to apply to areas outside of that court’s jurisdiction.
“The ability of law enforcement to trace communications into jurisdictions without obtaining an additional court order can be the difference between life and death for American citizens,” Ashcroft said.
“I think from a law enforcement perspective there are some sensible things in the Attorney General’s package,” said assistant professor of law Steven Mulroy. “For example, the authority to have roving and multi-jurisdictional wiretaps.”
The package would also grant more power to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to find, detain and deport illegal aliens who are suspected of having ties to terrorists or terrorist organizations.
Under current law, only aliens who are suspected of having ties to a specific individual can be deported. The proposed legislation would also allow the government to conduct surveillance on non-Americans for up to a year.
“We propose that any alien who provides material support to an organization that he or she knows or should know is a terrorist organization should be subject to removal from the United States,” Ashcroft said.
During a speech at FBI headquarters in Washington Tuesday, President Bush compared the legislative requests to tools the FBI already has at its disposal to fight organized crime and drug trafficking.
“Now, this is what we do for drug dealers and members of organized crime,” Bush said, “and it seems to make sense to me, if it’s good enough for the FBI to use these techniques for facing down those threats to America, that now that we are at war, we ought to give the FBI the tools necessary to track down terrorists.”
Civil liberties groups and constitutional guardians have expressed concerns that the proposals are too broad in scope and could infringe on people’s constitutional rights, even if those people are not American citizens.
“There could be a problem with the government identifying aliens as terrorist risks and detaining them indefinitely without the normal due process protections we would afford criminal defendants,” Mulroy said. “The overriding principal in all these things is that normally you give the executive branch power to take reasonable steps to intrude on people’s privacy, but always with the oversight of the independent judiciary.” Bush sought to reassure lawmakers and citizens that each proposal has been carefully studied and crafted to avoid constitutional pitfalls.
“I want you to know that every one of the proposals we’ve made on Capitol Hill, carried by the Attorney General, has been carefully reviewed,” Bush said. “They are measured requests, they are responsible requests, they are constitutional requests.”
The Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights ordered the Civil Rights Division’s National Origin Working Group to combat violations of federal civil and criminal rights laws affecting individuals who are, or are perceived to be, of Middle Eastern descent.
The group will gather reports based on national origin, citizen status and religion as well as experiences with law enforcement and refer them to the appropriate federal authorities.
According to the Department of Justice, 352 individuals have been detained in connection with the attacks that occurred September 11 in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
