WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's latest effort to protect the nation against terrorist attacks is raising concern that Americans are now at greater risk of intrusion from their own government.

The legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, signed by President Bush on Monday, contains provisions that build on law enforcement's ability to peek at e-mail, monitor credit card purchases, bank transactions and travel patterns and shield its own activities from scrutiny.

Even critics acknowledge that taken individually, each provision is just a tiny step toward transforming the federal government into "Big Brother." But coupled with a series of recent court rulings favorable to the Department of Justice and new administration initiatives, privacy advocates warn that the nation is indeed experiencing the beginnings of a real-life Orwellian nightmare.

In recent weeks:

• The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the Total Information Awareness program, which will monitor passports, visas, work permits, airline tickets, rental cars, gun purchases, chemical purchases and other activities in search of potential terrorists. The program is being run by Adm. John Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser who was convicted in 1990 of five counts of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra affair. (The convictions were overturned on a technicality.) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. , said she plans to try to cut off funds for the program until Congress has a chance to review it.
  
• A special federal appeals court ruled that the Justice Department has broad powers under the Patriot Act enacted last year to use wiretaps, read e- mails and conduct searches of suspected terrorists. Attorney General John Ashcroft called the ruling "a victory for liberty, safety and the security of the American people" and immediately stepped up the use of intelligence, saying the decision "revolutionizes our ability to investigate and prosecute terrorists" by allowing criminal investigators and intelligence officers to share information.
  
• The Justice Department challenged a court order instructing it to release the names of hundreds of people arrested on immigration charges after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Federal attorneys argued that to make such information public would provide al Qaeda a "road map" to the government's anti-terrorism efforts.
  
• A federal court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to the detention of about 600 war prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that a group of clergy and professors have no legal standing to intervene.

"Some of these measures have nothing to do with homeland security," said Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. "We continue to chip away at these protections, and we continue to move things off the books in a way that are away from scrutiny. It's a troubling step down the slippery slope."

The recent developments follow a vast expansion of the Justice Department's surveillance powers under the anti-terrorism bill passed last year, an easing of restrictions on FBI agents to infiltrate churches, mosques and political groups where terrorist activity is suspected, and the secretive detention of an estimated 1,200 foreigners with suspected links to terrorism.

The United States has a long history of restricting civil liberties during times of war, from President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to President Franklin Roosevelt's forced internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.

Most Americans appear to have accepted the activities as a reasonable precaution at a time of high risk, polls show, with the notable exception of Arab Americans, who have been the primary targets of law enforcement.

FEARS OF UNENDING CONFLICT

However, unlike government crackdowns during the Civil War or World War II, the fight against terror is open-ended, prompting some concern that the government's new authority will last indefinitely, and ultimately affect a wider circle of Americans. And because so much of today's law enforcement activity is taking place in secret, civil libertarians warn that there are no judicial or congressional checks to make sure the power is not abused.

"There is a tremendous potential for abuse," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal interest group that monitors the administration's judicial activity. "The Department of Homeland Defense is another example of . . . providing authority to the executive branch with a lack of effective oversight and checks and balances."

Justice Department officials say the real threat to freedom is posed by the terrorists.

"At this time and place, the threat to liberty is the disorder that terrorists seek to bring about in our government," Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh said in interview earlier this year.

Dinh, who fled Vietnam as a 10-year-old child, and was the chief author of the Patriot Act, said he has seen "threats to liberty from both the lack of government, and the excessive zeal of totalitarian control."

"It is not a balance between security and liberty. It is a liberty rooted in security," he said.

"Ask yourself this: When you take your child to a ballgame, are you more afraid of government agents watching your child, or terrorists attacking the ballpark. It's as simple as that. The threat to our freedom comes from Osama bin Laden, not the U.S. government."

The Department of Homeland Security is intended to combat terrorists by knocking down bureaucratic barriers and combining 170,000 federal workers, in agencies ranging from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Coast Guard and Customs Service, under a single department.

Buried in the legislative details is a provision calling for the creation of something that sounds like it was taken from George Orwell's "1984": the Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The agency is charged with creating a massive database that could be used to identify future terrorists or, some fear, spy on alleged domestic enemies.

LOWER THRESHOLD FOR E-MAIL

The legislation also lowers the threshold for Internet service providers to comply with government authorities who want to monitor e-mail. In the past, authorities had to show they were concerned about an "immediate danger," while under the new standard they must show only that they are acting out of a "reasonable belief" that a crime is about to occur.

As the government seeks to reduce the privacy of suspected terrorists, it also has extended its own power to shield information from the public. A provision in the legislation allows the agency to exempt itself in certain cases from Freedom of Information Act requests without any judicial review.

"Without vigilant oversight by Congress and accountability to U.S. citizens . . . there is a significant threat that this new department will abuse civil rights and infringe on civil liberties," said People for the American Way President Ralph Neas.

"Unfortunately, opportunities to attack the legitimate rights of Americans are widespread in our new reality, from harassing immigrants to the collection of massive quantities of data on all Americans, innocent and otherwise," Neas said.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

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