ACLU Drops Case Against Patriot Act
As an attorney, this story always bothered me. In most issues, I can see what argument the other side would make, if for no other reason than being prepared to counter them. But every time I looked at the Patriot Act, I simply could not see, in the wording of the Act, what possible interpretations its opponants feared. It was not like the Anti-Sedition Act of WWI or the various security measures (Japanese Internment) of the FDR Administration. People would try to explain to me what they feared, and the arguments simply did not make sense.
Example: the Patriot Act allows for the FBI to look at your library card records and see what you checked out. Not only does this not alarm me, this makes me laugh and loll my tongue. Communication between you and your library is not privileged communication and never has been. It is not even private communication, in the sense that a reasonable man expects the communication to be secure from public notice. Why? Because the library is a public institution, run by the state and local government, paid for by tax money. A library is not even the phone company; and the phone company records, in the eyes of the law, are not privileged communications, not even private. If you dial a number, you know or should know the operator knows what number was dialed and when: because she, or the computer she runs, placed the call. The police do not even need a warrant to examine phone company dialing records. Likewise, when you check a book out from the library, you know or should know that the librarian keeps a record thereof. In the eyes of the law, you are not the owner of said book, you are a bailee, holding public property in your hands. The privileged relationship which exists between lawyer-client, patient-doctor, man-and-wife simply is not present, never has been, and there is no way in law or logic such a relationship could exist. The hue and cry over this issue was beyond absurd: it was a fraud. Only people illiterate in the law would be fooled by this argument.
And there were no facts, no examples of anyone who actually had been oppressed, or deprived of a civil right, or afraid to check out a book, or anything. This is one example of many, one argument of many arguments. I cannot actually call it an argument: it was hysteria.
So! Now that the ACLU has dropped the case against the Patriot Act, does this mean the hysteria will die down? Can we take this as evidence that the sharp young lawyers have examined the law with a fne tooth comb, and concluded it has no Constitutional unsoundness?
Don’t hold your breath, friends.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102801001.html
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
