Our society is full of paradoxes– lots of people talk a good game, but they often contradict themselves. Take the issue of privacy, for example. The internet, newspapers, magazines, and similar forums have had tons of articles about identity theft, protecting your private information, and the like, and it’s obviously a concern. Yet people seem to have no problem with the government listening in to their calls, snooping into their personal records, and the like.

I have been worried about the erosion of civil liberties the last few years, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of an outcry over assaults on the Constitution and the rights that our ancestors fought so hard to secure. For example, habeas corpus. Habeas essentially prevents you from being jailed or detained indefinitely. Here’s an explanation of habeas corpus (a bit legalistic, but I think it covers the basics). As it states at the start,

A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody.

Here in the U.S., it probably isn’t on anyone’s radar- yet– because so far the attempts to remove habeas corpus have been aimed largely at “enemy combatants” who aren’t citizens. There’s been some pushback in the courts, such as Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which both ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court, where the Justices slapped the gummint’s hand and said, “No.” In the Jose Padilla case, Padilla had been detained as a “material witness” for a month, then labeled an “enemy combatant.” While his attorney filed suit against the government, and the case wended its way through the judicial system, the government refused to charge him, instead holding him indefinitely. He was finally charged in November 2005, more than three years after his initial arrest. The rulings at various levels were often inconclusive, and the Supreme Court ducked and dodged, and never really fully addressed the case. Padilla was recently convicted on conspiracy charges, but has yet to be convicted for any specific act or action.

So why should you care? Because Padilla is a U.S. citizen. Even though right now the abandonment of core legal and constitutional principles is directly at “enemy combatants” and people ostensibly tied into the “war on terror,” it opens the door for the government to do the same thing to anyone. Should any administration choose to do so, it rapidly becomes a slippery slope, and down the line, further abuses could occur.

Even more importantly, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which ruled that the military commissions at Guantanamo were invalid, Smirk goaded and rushed Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act. Within the act, a provision stripped habeas corpus from non-citizens. So far, it’s not really on anyone’s radar, because it applies to “non-citizens”– so far. What it definitely does do is change irrevocably what the United States stands for, and what it means to be an American. As Keith Olbermann notes, the removal of habeas is in direct violation of the oath our federal officials make when they assume office.

Right now, the ACLU, among other groups, is fighting to restore habeas corpus. I really hope they succeed. It’s not just here in the U.S. too; there have been concerns in Britain about civil rights as well. It really makes me wonder if the “war on terror” is really a “war on constitutional government.” Except so far the main perpetrators seem to be the constitutional governments themselves, and the public in the nations of such governments seem to be willing to self-destruct, so long as they keep their jobs, homes, and bank accounts.

Back to privacy issues. We have a government that pushed for something called the PATRIOT Act, which included all kinds of goodies, including the right to listen in on your phone calls. For us deaf folks, that may not be too big of an issue, but there’s also the general principle, you know. Not to mention the government looking into library records, medical records, financial records, school records, 33 RPM records, sports records, and the like. So it pleased me this week when a federal judge ruled that the portion of the act dealing with gag orders in relation to National Security Letters is unconstitutional. Of course, this is all contigent on appeal, so who knows what will happen next. I’m just glad the judiciary still has its spine, because Congress can’t seem to find its spine, and the administration never had any to begin with. The Corporate Media has had a mixed record on reporting these types of issues. But when it does get it right, the articles we see are rather disturbing. In this New York Times article from today, it appears the FBI’s data mining in relation to national security letters has extended beyond the initial target, and included everyone that person has been in contact with. In this era of little to no oversight, such a broad net means the tactic can be easily abused.

In case you’re wondering just what national security letters are and why you should be worried, go here. It’s rather old, but for a peek into the life of someone who’s received such a letter and the Kafkaesque situation it produces, see this. As the letter writer recounts:

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case — including the mere fact that I received an NSL — from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

The author makes a crucial point:

Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI’s actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny.

This is part of the reason why I am concerned about civil liberties. Oversight is crucial, and so far Congress has more or less abandoned their responsibilities in this area (with the exception of a small handful of individual legislators). The courts have a mixed record; sometimes they jump in, sometimes they don’t. This is especially the case with the Supreme Court, which twice had an opportunity to rule in the Padilla case, and chose not to. To understand better the kind of atmosphere the writer has had to live in, watch the film “The Lives of Others.” It happened not that long ago, in Eastern Germany. Don’t kid yourself– it is very plausible it could happen here.

At some point, we cross the line, past the point of no return. I’ve written about this before, about the “moral Rubicon” we face. Several lines have been crossed over the last few years, but there’s still time to turn back. But the decision is up to all of us– not just our judges, our legislators, our other public officials. It’s up to anyone who has a mind and a willingness to speak up and speak out.

What does it mean to be an American? What kind of essential values do we hold, or should we hold? What examples of such values can we demonstrate to the world? How can we speak about the freedoms we have, if we are denying ourselves the rights to those freedoms? How can we speak authoritatively about oversight and checks and balances, when these reference points are being weakened and removed?

Right now, such a discussion is a paradox– we’re willing to define ourselves as individuals, and to protect our privacy in individual situations. But we seem to have a bit of a problem when it comes to the collective “we”– what is our role as a society, and what are the boundaries of such a society? Is the United States we have now the United States we want? When we talk about privacy, what are we protecting, and how much do we want to protect? When we talk about safety and security, what and how much are we willing to give up in the process?