What do terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers have in common?

They’re each ways in which the government can frighten the public into granting it additional powers it doesn’t really need. And when tied together, it can get really scary.

I was going to link to some posts from a so-called counterterrorist site, but it appears they’ve both been pulled, probably because they were stupid. But they ran something like this:

Terrorists use drug dealing to finance their activities. Therefore, drug dealers are terrorists. And we need new laws to go after drug dealers. Just look at what these meth users in Canada did, using identity theft to finance their drug habits!

The argument goes that because people are committing crimes, that are already illegal, we need more laws to prosecute them with. These laws invariably come ever closer to breaching our civil rights and offering only false hopes in return.

Maybe that’s enough for the rest of America, to live under the illusion of security, but it isn’t enough for me. I will have real security, and I refuse to compromise civil rights to get it.

For one thing, it just isn’t necessary to do so.

Take the example of Iyman Faris. Faris was caught plotting to destroy a bridge in New York City in 2002, primarily because of information gained from the NSA’s special collection program, the existence of which was revealed today.

The targets of this program were apparently people whose telephone numbers were found in computers, cell phones, and the like seized from al-Qaeda operatives overseas. Such numbers can — and should — be surveilled, with proper oversight, as it will invariably turn up terrorist plots in progress and allow us to thwart them.

The part that was missing, however, was the oversight, something that is critical in cases such as this, to preserve our civil rights and ensure that such programs aren’t abused. And yet some extremists are trying to claim the program did have oversight, because a couple of people in Congress knew about it. These extremists fail to mention that those people in Congress had grave concerns over the program.

They also fail to mention we already had a court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, set up to rubber-stamp exactly this sort of surveillance, on a moment’s notice if need be. (Yes, rubber-stamp; they virtually never reject a request for a warrant.) Bush’s secret 2002 order allowed the NSA to bypass the court, effectively removing any semblance of oversight.

The White House claims the executive order is within the law, but refuses to discuss the matter further. But I can’t find any law that says U.S. citizens can be placed under surveillance without a warrant. All I can come up with is this:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Bush seems to be saying that somehow he doesn’t even need to bother with the warrant. If that’s so, he’d better come up with a good explanation, before the impeachment proceedings begin.

To make the position crystal clear: We absolutely need tools such as NSA surveillance to fight terrorism. But if we compromise our civil rights in the process, we will have become no better than the fallen regimes we fought in previous years, and the liberty we’re fighting for will have been lost.

(And thanks to Bruce Schneier for the title.)