I have no doubt. Our civil liberties have been under attack since the establishment of the CIA. The Patriot Act allows the abuses to be exercised openly under the protection of law rather than in secret collusion with compliant judges.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted in the wake of FBI surveillance of U.S. citizens in the '60's and the '70's. This national security intelligence tool is being recklessly manipulated in the administration's zeal to prosecute their cynical "war on terrorism."
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/ The ACLU has asked the Supreme Court to review whether the Constitution and the Patriot Act permitted the government to use looser foreign intelligence standards to conduct surveillance in criminal investigations in the United States. The Supreme Court refused that request.
The FISA was sponsored in the ‘60's by Sen. Edward Kennedy and others in an attempt to reign in warrantless surveillance. But the FBI and the NSA have used the act to set up secret courts and have perverted the act to conduct surveillance for domestic criminal investigations in addition to their foreign counterintelligence probes.
The FISA court and the Court of Review authorize government wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations. Under FISA, all hearings and decisions are conducted in secret. The government is normally the only party to FISA proceedings and the only party that can appeal to the Supreme Court.
In an appeal, the ACLU argued that,"These fundamental issues should not be finally
by courts that sit in secret, do not ordinarily publish their decisions, and allow only the government to appear before them."
The ACLU and its supporters have asserted that some of their members and many other Americans are currently subject to illegal surveillance, noting that the FBI has already targeted its members in numerous other ways. Under the FISA statute, a U.S. citizen may be subject to a FISC surveillance order for political statements and views that are determined to be unpopular by the secret Court of Review .
According to the ACLU:
- 8,000 Arab and South Asian immigrants have been interrogated because of their religion or ethnic background, not because of actual wrongdoing.
- Thousands of men, mostly of Arab and South Asian origin, have been held in secretive federal custody for weeks and months, sometimes without any charges filed against them. The government has refused to publish their names and whereabouts, even when ordered to do so by the courts.
- The press and the public have been barred from immigration court hearings of those detained after September 11th and the courts are ordered to keep secret even that the hearings are taking place.
- The government is allowed to monitor communications between federal detainees and their lawyers, destroying the attorney-client privilege and threatening the right to counsel.
- New Attorney General Guidelines allow FBI spying on religious and political organizations and individuals without having evidence of wrongdoing.
- President Bush has ordered military commissions to be set up to try suspected terrorists who are not citizens. They can convict based on hearsay and secret evidence by only two-thirds vote.
- American citizens suspected of terrorism are being held indefinitely in military custody without being charged and without access to lawyers.