Search

The national security and civil liberties tensions of the World War II mass incarceration link 9/11 and the 2015 Paris-San Bernardino attacks to the Trump era in America - an era darkened by accelerating discrimination against and intimidation of those asserting rights of freedom of religion, association and speech, and an era marked by increasingly volatile protests. This book discusses the broad civil liberties challenges posed by these past-into-the-future linkages highlighting pressing questions about the significance of judicial independence for a constitutional democracy committed both to security and to the rule of law. What will happen when those profiled, detained, harassed, or discriminated against under the mantle of national security turn to the courts for legal protection? How will the U.S. courts respond to the need to protect both society and fundamental democratic values of our political process? Will courts fall passively in line with the elective branches, as they did in Korematsu v. United States, or serve as the guardian of the Bill of Rights, scrutinizing claims of'pressing public necessity'as justification for curtailing fundamental liberties? These queries paint three pictures portrayed in this book. First, they portray the present-day significance of the Supreme Court's partially discredited, yet never overruled, 1944 decision upholding the constitutional validity of the mass Japanese American exclusion leading to indefinite incarceration - a decision later found to be driven by the government's presentation of'intentional falsehoods'and'willful historical inaccuracies'to the Court. Second, the queries implicate prospects for judicial independence in adjudging Harassment, Exclusion, Incarceration disputes in contemporary America and beyond. Third, and even more broadly for security and liberty controversies, the queries engage the American populace in shaping law and policy at the ground level by placing the courts'legitimacy on center stage. They address how critical legal advocacy and organized public pressure targeting judges and policymakers - realpolitik advocacy - at times can foster judicial fealty to constitutional principles while promoting the elective branches accountability for the benefit of all Americans. This book addresses who we are as Americans and whether we are genuinely committed to democracy governed by the Constitution.

The Case for Congress: Separation of Powers and the War on Terror examines the constitutional relationship between Congress and the President in the post-September 11 world, arguing that Congress should exercise its legitimate authority in guiding United States policy. While many commentators have focused on the extent of the President's national security and foreign affairs authority, both domestically and abroad, this title focuses on the constitutional authority of Congress to serve as a check on executive power. As a national consensus has developed around the notion that the Bush administration made grave errors in its policy decisions, a reminder of the leading role that Congress can play in those decisions is particularly appropriate. Unlike scholarly work devoted either to detailing or criticizing the Bush administration's policy decisions, this accessible and balanced book focuses on the policies themselves, and on the way in which Congress can influence those policies for the better. The authors further offer specific and useful recommendations for legislative measures that may correct existing policy deficiencies and promote sounder decision-making in the area of national security and foreign affairs.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans were confronted with a new kind of war and a new kind of danger. After the strikes, institutions were created to mobilize the domestic response to potential terrorist threats and Congress passed legislation giving the president broad powers to fight terrorism and to provide heightened security for the nation. In this timely work, a team of experts addresses the question of how a democracy faces the challenge of balancing legitimate homeland security concerns against the rights and freedoms of its citizens. They evaluate the measures introduced in the aftermath of 9/11 and assess the far-reaching consequences of those changes for American politics and society.

Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Apple and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets.In Spying on Democracy, National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties and the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases and their perceived political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government intelligence agencies mine data from sources as diverse as surveillance cameras and unmanned drones to iris scans and medical records, while combing websites, email, phone records and social media for resale to third parties, including U.S. intelligence agencies.The ACLU's Michael German says of the examples shown in Boghosian's book,'this unrestrained spying is inevitably used to suppress the most essential tools of democracy: the press, political activists, civil rights advocates and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse.'Boghosian adds,'If the trend is permitted to continue, we will soon live in a society where nothing is confidential, no information is really secure, and our civil liberties are under constant surveillance and control.'Spying on Democracy is a timely, invaluable and accessible primer for anyone concerned with protecting privacy, freedom and the U.S. Constitution.Heidi Boghosian is the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. She co-hosts Law and Disorder, broadcast on WBAI-FM in New York and over forty stations nationwide. She is based in New York City.'Everyone of us is under the omniscient magnifying glass of the government and corporate spies.... How do we respond to this smog of surveillance? Start by reading Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance by Heidi Boghosian'—Bill Moyers'With ex-CIA staffer Edward Snowden's leaks about National Security Agency surveillance in the headlines, Heidi Boghosian's Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance feels especially timely. Boghosian reveals how the government acquires information from telecommunications companies and other organizations to create databases about'persons of interest.''—Publishers Weekly'Heidi Boghosian's Spying on Democracy is the answer to the question,'if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you care if someone's watching you?''—Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU and former FBI agent

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America's political institutions underwent radical changes as they adapted to comprehensive security reforms. While the media exhaustively covered new security protocols in the executive office, little attention was paid to other federal agencies and branches that overhauled their systems to accommodate heightened security requirements. As a congressional fellow living in Washington, D.C., Jocelyn Jones Evans was an eyewitness to the institutional culture of Capitol Hill before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as during the subsequent anthrax scare. In One Nation Under Siege: Congress, Terrorism, and the Fate of American Democracy, Evans uses her personal experiences as the foundation for a richly researched analysis of how Congress changed as an institution and a national symbol in the wake of 9/11. Evans reveals not only physical transformations but also internal policy shifts that threaten democracy by limiting citizens'access to their elected leaders. The only comprehensive study of the effects of terrorism on the nation's capital, One Nation Under Siege provides a detailed investigation of how the nation's intricate political system adapted in times of crisis. It covers an essential chapter in the social and political history of the United States.

Considering the question of how levels of security allow state power to be increased to the point at which it infringes essential civil liberties, this book explores the creeping power of the executive and the unfeasibility of widespread use of the Human Rights Act as a bulwark against the oppressive use of state power.

Der 11. September 2001 hat die Welt verändert. Sowohl in den USA als auch in Deutschland haben die Terroranschläge die Menschen nachhaltig in Angst versetzt. Anhand einer Untersuchung von Meinungsumfragen wird gezeigt, dass dies die Bereitschaft der Bevölkerung, Einschränkungen von bürgerlichen Freiheiten zugunsten gesteigerter Sicherheitsbedingungen hinzunehmen, verstärkt hat. Dabei fanden vor allem Maßnahmen, die sich kollektiv oder auf Individuen ungeliebter Gesellschaftsgruppen auswirken Zuspruch. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Fürsprecher stärkerer Sicherheitsbedingungen in beiden Ländern diese sich bietende Gelegenheit genutzt haben, um weitreichende Gesetzesänderungen wie den USA PATRIOT ACT und die deutschen Antiterrorgesetze I und II durchzusetzen. Diese Gesetze implementieren Maßnahmen, die zuvor jahrelang erfolgreich von Verfechtern bürgerlicher Freiheiten abgewehrt wurden. Anhand einer Untersuchung der Überwachungsgesetze beider Länder vor und nach dem 11. September wird belegt, dass Voraussetzungen für eine effektive staatliche Kontrolle, sowohl im geheimdienstlichen als auch Kriminalitätsbekämpfungssektor bereits vor 2001 vorhanden waren. Weiterhin wird dargestellt, dass die Anschläge dazu genutzt wurden, Befugnisse der Exekutive zu stärken und gleichzeitig, vor allem in den USA aber zunehmend auch in Deutschland einer gerichtlichen Kontrolle zu entziehen. Darüber hinaus werden die harschen Folgen für'ungewollte'oder'verdächtige'Ausländer nachgewiesen, indem die Behandlung Fremder vor dem 11. September mit dem Ausmaß der amerikanischen'Wegsperrtaktik'und dem deutschen Ansatz der grundrechtsfeindlichen und nahezu absoluten Datenüberwachung nach den Terroranschlägen verglichen wird. Anhand immer weiter reichender Gesetzesvorschläge, wie der, der zur erfolgreich eingeführten Antiterrordatei in Deutschland und dem gescheiterten'PATRIOT Act II'in den USA geführt hat, wird des Weiteren die Annahme untermauert, dass die Verschiebung des Gleichgewichtes zwischen bürgerlicher Freiheit und Sicherheit zugunsten der Sicherheit nur durch ein anhaltendes Klima der Angst weiter vorangetrieben wird. Im Gegensatz zu den USA hält sich in Deutschland ein derartiges Klima auf Grund wiederholter Anschlägen in Europa. Die Arbeit schließt mit der Einsicht, dass trotz unterschiedlich ausgestalteter Maßnahmen vor allem die Gewaltenkontrolle nach dem 11. September in Mitleidenschaft gezogen wurde und Verfechter stärkerer Sicherheitsmaßnahmen sich nie zufrieden geben, sondern anhaltend versuchen immer weiter reichende Maßnahmen durchzusetzen, die auch die'normale'Bevölkerung betreffen, solange sich die Möglichkeit bietet.

A New York Times Bestseller! “I hope we wake up quickly because history shows it's a small window in which people can fight back before it is too dangerous to fight back.”—Naomi Wolf on Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson Tonight In a stunning indictment, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century's worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile. The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties. In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us–with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlets–that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom. “Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty,” states Wolf. Wolf is taking her message directly to the American people in the most accessible form and as part of a large national campaign to reach out to ordinary Americans about the dangers we face today. This includes a lecture and speaking tour, and being part of the nascent American Freedom Campaign, a grassroots effort to ensure that presidential candidates pledge to uphold the constitution and protect our liberties from further erosion. The End of America will shock, enrage, and motivate–spurring us to act, as the Founders would have counted on us to do in a time such as this, as rebels and patriots–to save our liberty and defend our nation.

The United States faces the realistic and indefinite threat of terrorist attack with nuclear weapons. Whether the United States is successful in preventing such an attack will depend on whether we effectively wield the instruments of security. It will also depend on whether we effectively manage national security processes and apply the law in a manner that both enhances security and upholds our core values. As a result, lawyers, not just presidents, generals, and spies, will decide the outcome of this conflict. This book, first published in 2007, is essential for anyone wanting an understanding of national security law and process. The book includes chapters on constitutional law, the use of force, and homeland security, presented in the context of today's threats and as applied to issues like rendition and electronic surveillance.

The executive director of the ACLU takes a critical look at civil liberties in this country at a time when constitutional freedoms are in peril. Using the stories of real Americans on the frontlines of the fight for civil liberties, this book examines the dangerous erosion of the Bill of Rights in the age of the War on Terror. Readers are taken behind the scenes of some important civil liberties cases, including: the National Security Agency's warrantless spying program; legal battles over the rights of individuals suspected of terrorism, such as John Walker Lindh (the'American Taliban'); South Dakota's attempts to place an outright ban on abortions in the face of an attempt to open an abortion clinic on an Indian reservation; a modern-day Scopes trial over'intelligent design'in Dover, Pennsylvania; and a gay teenager sentenced to 17 years for having consensual sex with a younger teenage boy.--From publisher's description.

Did America's democratic convictions'change forever'after the terrorist attacks of September 11? In the wake of 9/11, many pundits predicted that Americans'new and profound anxiety would usher in an era of political acquiescence. Fear, it was claimed, would drive the public to rally around the president and tolerate diminished civil liberties in exchange for security. Political scientist Darren Davis challenges this conventional wisdom in Negative Liberty, revealing a surprising story of how September 11 affected Americans'views on civil liberties and security. Drawing on a unique series of original public opinion surveys conducted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and over the subsequent three years, Negative Liberty documents the rapid shifts in Americans'opinions regarding the tradeoff between liberty and security, at a time when the threat of terrorism made the conflict between these values particularly stark. Theories on the psychology of threat predicted that people would cope with threats by focusing on survival and reaffirming their loyalty to their communities, and indeed, Davis found that Americans were initially supportive of government efforts to prevent terrorist attacks by rolling back certain civil liberties. Democrats and independents under a heightened sense of threat became more conservative after 9/11, and trust in government reached its highest level since the Kennedy administration. But while ideological divisions were initially muted, this silence did not represent capitulation on the part of civil libertarians. Subsequent surveys in the years after the attacks revealed that, while citizens'perceptions of threat remained acute, trust in the government declined dramatically in response to the perceived failures of the administration's foreign and domestic security policies. Indeed, those Americans who reported the greatest anxiety about terrorism were the most likely to lose confidence in the government in the years after 2001. As a result, ideological unity proved short lived, and support for civil liberties revived among the public. Negative Liberty demonstrates that, in the absence of faith in government, even extreme threats to national security are not enough to persuade Americans to concede their civil liberties permanently. The September 11 attacks created an unprecedented conflict between liberty and security, testing Americans'devotion to democratic norms. Through lucid analysis of concrete survey data, Negative Liberty sheds light on how citizens of a democracy balance these competing values in a time of crisis.

The authors address the hard questions of individual freedom versus national security that are on the minds of Americans of all political stripes. They bring together the pivotal events, leaders, policies, and fateful decisions—often path-breaking, more often ending in folly—that have subverted our constitutional government from its founding. You reach the inescapable conclusion, the authors write, that the United States is a warrior nation, has been addicted to war from the start, and is able to sustain its warfare habit only by mugging American taxpayers, and believing in its mission as God's chosen.FDR's Four Freedoms—Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—were presented to the American people in his 1941 State of the Union address, and they became the inspiration for a second bill of rights, extending the New Deal and guaranteeing work, housing, medical care, and education. Although the bill never was adopted in a legal sense in this country, its principles pervaded the political landscape for an entire generation, including the War on Poverty and the Great Society reforms of the 1960s. Furthermore, the ideas expressed in the Four Freedoms speech inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But since the late 1970s and early 1980s, these freedoms have been under assault, from presidential administrations of both parties, economic pressures, and finally, the alleged requirements of national security. After 9/11, this process accelerated even more rapidly.

A Brookings Institution Press and the Computer Ethics Institute publicationCan we safeguard our nation's security without weakening cherished liberties? And how does technology affect the potential conflict between these fundamental goals? These questions acquired renewed urgency in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They also spurred heated debates over such controversial measures as Total Information Awareness and the USA PATRIOT Act.In this volume, leading figures from the worlds of government, public policy, and business analyze the critical issues underlying these debates. The first set of essays examines the relationship between liberty and security and explores where the public stands on how best to balance the two. In the second section, the authors focus on information technology's role in combating terrorism, as well as tools, policies, and procedures that can strengthen both security and liberty at the same time. Finally, the third part of the book takes on a series of key legal issues concerning the restrictions that should be placed on the government's power to exploit these powerful new technologies.Contributors include Zoë Baird (Markle Foundation), James Barksdale (Barksdale Group), Bruce Berkowitz (Hoover Institution), Jerry Berman (Center for Democracy and Technology), Beryl A. Howell (Stroz Friedberg), Jon Kyl (U.S. Senate), Gilman Louie (In-Q-Tel), David Luban (Georgetown University), Richard A. Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), Marc Rotenberg (Electronic Privacy Information Center), James Steinberg (Brookings), Larry Thompson (Brookings), Gayle von Eckartsberg (In-Q-Tel), and Alan F. Westin (Columbia University).

Heavily armed guards at the entrances to malls and restaurants. Citizens deemed “suspicious” taken away without formal charges or legal counsel. Would a “safe” America even look like America anymore?One of the few journalists to penetrate the new counter terror initiative, Matthew Brzezinski offers an insider's look at the new technology, laws, tactics, and persistent vulnerabilities of the post-9/11 era. The result is this startling, sometimes controversial look at what it will take to achieve genuine homeland security and what it may be like to live inside Fortress AmericaIs this what a safe America will look like?• Cameras at airport ticket counters that can tell if you are stressed • Satellites and surveillance equipment that can see through the walls of your home• Computer programs capable of spotting abnormal behavior • National ID “smart” cards encoding your personal, financial, and medical information required for electronic police spot checksIn the aftermath of September 11, a massive effort has been launched to protect us from another terrorist attack. But the costs of safeguarding our country will require not only unprecedented amounts of funding, but dramatic changes in the way Americans lead their everyday lives. Is this the new price of freedom? • Mandatory chips installed in all cell phones and automobiles that can locate you instantly within a dozen yards• Patriot II legislation that can arbitrarily revoke citizenship and allow terrorist sympathizers to vanish without a trace• Transponder implants that could be injected into the bodies of prisoners, foreign nationals, and perhaps one day all US citizens…Such high-tech measures are not the stuff of science fiction but in many cases are already being implemented. As Brzezinski discovers, similar measures have been in use for years in security states like Israel. But will Americans trade liberty for security? Will they have a choice? And can even the most radical measures insure that a 9/11 style attack won't happen again? From an unheeded warning six years before the WTC disaster to dramatic war-game scenarios secretly conducted at Andrews Air Force Base and chilling on-site simulations of actual attacks, Fortress America paints a sobering picture of the future of freedom…and what life may be like in a maximum security state.

In The Naked Crowd, acclaimed author Jeffrey Rosen makes an impassioned argument about how to preserve freedom, privacy, and security in a post-9/11 world. How we use emerging technologies, he insists, will be crucial to the preservation of essential American ideals. In our zeal to catch terrorists and prevent future catastrophic events, we are going too far—largely because of irrational fears—and violating essential American freedoms. That's the contention at the center of this persuasive new polemic by Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor of The New Republic, which builds on his award-winning book The Unwanted Gaze. Through wide-ranging reportage and cultural analysis, Rosen argues that it is possible to strike an effective and reasonable balance between liberty and security. Traveling from England to Silicon Valley, he offers a penetrating account of why well-designed laws and technologies have not always been adopted. Drawing on a broad range of sources—from the psychology of fear to the latest Code Orange alerts and airport security technologies—he also explores the reasons that the public, the legislatures, the courts, and technologists have made feel-good choices that give us the illusion of safety without actually making us safer. He describes the dangers of implementing poorly thought out technologies that can make us less free while distracting our attention from responses to terrorism that might work. Rosen also considers the social and technological reasons that the risk-averse democracies of the West continue to demand ever-increasing levels of personal exposure in a search for an illusory and emotional feeling of security. In Web logs, chat rooms, and reality TV shows, an increasing number of citizens clutter the public sphere with private revelations best kept to themselves. The result is the peculiar ordeal of living in the Naked Crowd, in which few aspects of our lives are immune from public scrutiny. With vivid prose and persuasive analysis, The Naked Crowd is both an urgent warning about the choices we face in responding to legitimate fears of terror and a vision for a better future.