[NYTr] Studs Terkel: The Wiretap This Time

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29terkel.html

Op-Ed:

The Wiretap This Time

By STUDS TERKEL

Chicago

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White
House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet
interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United
States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies
from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with
the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I
am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks
carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day
in court.

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that
politically active Americans view their relationship with government.
In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than
10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of
particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in
American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used
to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the
Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually
created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity
continued through the Red Scare of the period.

In the 1950s, during the sad period known as the McCarthy era, one’s
political beliefs again served as a rationale for government
monitoring. Individual corporations and entire industries were coerced
by government leaders into informing on individuals and barring their
ability to earn a living.

I was among those blacklisted for my political beliefs. My crime? I had
signed petitions. Lots of them. I had signed on in opposition to Jim
Crow laws and poll taxes and in favor of rent control and pacifism.
Because the petitions were thought to be Communist-inspired, I lost my
ability to work in television and radio after refusing to say that I
had been “duped” into signing my name to these causes.

By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the
Vietnam war spurred social justice movements. The government’s
response? More surveillance. In the name of national security, the
F.B.I. conducted warrantless wiretaps of political activists,
journalists, former White House staff members and even a member of
Congress.

Then things changed. In 1975, the hearings led by Senator Frank Church
of Idaho revealed the scope of government surveillance of private
citizens and lawful organizations. As Americans saw the damage, they
reached a consensus that this unrestrained surveillance had a corrosive
impact on us all.

In 1978, with broad public support, Congress passed the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, which placed national security
investigations, including wiretapping, under a system of warrants
approved by a special court. The law was not perfect, but as a result
of its enactment and a series of subsequent federal laws, a generation
of Americans has come to adulthood protected by a legal structure and a
social compact making clear that government will not engage in
unbridled, dragnet seizure of electronic communications.

The Bush administration, however, tore apart that carefully devised
legal structure and social compact. To make matters worse, after its
intrusive programs were exposed, the White House and the Senate
Intelligence Committee proposed a bill that legitimized blanket
wiretapping without individual warrants. The legislation directly
conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the
government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or
listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with
particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find.

Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to
provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that
violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that
this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the
government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to
know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government
will use the private information it received from them.

And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know
that their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal
district court in San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W.
Bush, noted that in an opinion in one of the immunity provision
lawsuits the “very action in question has previously been held
unlawful.”

I have observed and written about American life for some time. In
truth, nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by
this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic
generally does the right thing. By revealing the truth in a public
forum, the American people will have the facts to play their historic,
heroic role in putting our nation back on the path toward freedom. That
is why we deserve our day in court.

[Studs Terkel is the author of the forthcoming “Touch and Go: A
Memoir.”]

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company