Nothing to Hide

One cannot deny that President Obama’s Feb. 27 reauthorization of key provisions of the Patriot Act compromises his pledge to scale back the Bush-era surveillance state. However, his reversal is not the product of politically expedient cowardice; it is the responsible act of a commander-in-chief placing national security before naïve ideology.

Civil libertarians condemn the Patriot Act for unconstitutionally curtailing the right to privacy. However, as no such right is explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, this protection is at best controversial. We readily acknowledge that the Patriot Act’s provisions necessarily curtail privacy, but we strongly reject assertions of its illegitimacy.

Furthermore, the fabled choice between liberty and security is not the same as the choice between privacy and security. The possession of privileged, personal information by the federal government is not in and of itself problematic; information by itself is harmless. Only the potential abuses that could result from such knowledge threaten individual liberty. Thus, it is important to establish safeguards against government abuses like the Privacy Act of 1974, which prevents the unauthorized disclosure of personal information.

The prerequisite of judicial warrants acts as one such safeguard. Some argue that the judiciary does not provide an adequate check on the surveillance state due to the politicization of judges. It would be risible to suggest that any judicial system is apolitical, but it is insulting to categorically impugn the judicial temperament of the many sober men and women on the bench who have made it their life’s work to interpret the complex issues of American constitutional law. Citing the politicization of the judiciary to delegitimize its judgments on one issue delegitimizes our entire judicial system, since it calls into question the fitness of our judges to adjudicate any issue.

Two famous examples—those of the “Lackawanna Six” and the “Portland Seven”—provide tangible evidence of the Patriot Act’s effectiveness. The act enabled the nation’s intelligence and criminal investigation communities to share information with each other for the first time; this allowed the FBI to obtain evidence that directly led to the apprehension of six members of a terror cell in Lackawanna, NY and seven members of another cell in Portland, Ore. Nearly a decade’s worth of congressional testimonies and intelligence agency reports, including the 2004 testimony of former FBI director Robert Mueller and a 29-page report released by the Justice Department that year, provides countless other specific examples of the act’s contributions to national security. While it would be foolish to assert that none of these successes would have been possible without the Patriot Act, lack of absolute necessity does not equate to lack of value.

Finally, no one disagrees that we must address the root causes of terrorism. However, American counterterrorism policy must not be a zero-sum game. We must pursue both objectives—addressing terrorism’s causes and protecting ourselves from threats already in motion—with utmost vigor. Obama’s decision to reauthorize the Patriot Act validates its crucial role as an integral element of this effort.

Opponents of heightened surveillance criticize its supporters for paranoia and fear mongering. Ironically, it is because of their own delusional paranoia about a revival of McCarthyism and an impending Orwellian state that they so easily lose faith in the ability of a government built on individual liberty to safeguard that tenet.

Karthik R. Kasaraneni ’12 and Dhruv K. Singhal ’12, Crimson associate editorial editors, live in Currier House. They concentrate in chemistry and English, respectively.