In the climate of fear following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration pushed the USA Patriot Act through Congress with virtually no debate and with no amendments permitted. Some provisions of the act are up for renewal shortly.

Public opinion polls show widespread support for the Patriot Act. The same polls show that few Americans know what is in the act or that it vastly increases the government's power over American citizens.

Under the Patriot Act, the federal government no longer has to show reasonable cause that the wiretap target is involved in criminal activity but only has to assert a national security connection. In that case, the judge cannot reject the request.

The act gives law enforcement agencies unparalleled power to obtain personal and financial records, medical histories, Internet browsing history, bookstore purchases and travel records. It also puts the CIA back in the business of collecting domestic intelligence.

Under the "sneak and peek" provisions of the Patriot Act, the government may conduct a covert search first and seek a regular warrant later. The Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans recently decided that the Patriot Act allows police officers in Louisiana to conduct a brief search of homes or businesses without a search warrant. So much for the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit three months ago against some of the information-gathering procedures employed by the FBI and was told that the existence of the lawsuit was itself under a secrecy order.

It was only after weeks of negotiation that a heavily redacted version of the lawsuit was released to the public.

The House Judiciary Committee asked the FBI recently how it had used its new powers and was told: We can't tell you; it's classified.

The Bush administration used the Patriot Act to hold Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, two American citizens, incommunicado for two years. The Supreme Court recently ruled that U.S. citizens classified as enemy combatants must be granted access to the courts. Before that ruling, the administration held to the belief that it could detain anybody indefinitely that it labeled a terrorist, without legal proceedings.

It is facts like these that prompted Rep. Dan Burton, a conservative Republican, to observe, "An iron veil is descending over the executive branch."

The draft Domestic Security Enhancement Act, the so-called Patriot II Act, would give the government even more power.

It would permit the Department of Justice to strip Americans of their citizenship and seize their assets if they contributed to organizations — even inadvertently — or associated with individuals that the attorney general determined were affiliated with terrorism. Losing your citizenship would mean losing the right to live in the United States.

In addition, the government would no longer be required to disclose the identity of people arrested, even American citizens, as long as the arrest was asserted to be terrorism-related.

Patriot II would provide a gag rule against revealing subpoenas. If your banker or doctor revealed that your records had been subpoenaed by the FBI, he or she could face one to five years in prison.

The events of 9/11 were the result of failures of law enforcement and intelligence coordination and due in large part to our inability to track foreign nationals on U.S. soil. People forget that of the 1,200 people detained after the attacks, not one was convicted of a terrorism-related crime, although almost 800 were deported for immigration offenses.

We can expect terrorist attempts in the future, but mass roundups under the USA Patriot Act are not the way to prevent another 9/11; international and interagency sharing of data and better coordination are.

This fight against al-Qaida is not a threat to our survival such as World War II or the Cold War posed, despite Mr. Bush's efforts to portray himself as a war president.

It must be fought judiciously, using the appropriate means, not with a blunderbuss attack on our civil rights. The wiretap and surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act should be allowed to expire.

Maertens, of Mankato, served on the White House National Security Council staff under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Copyright 1996-2004 Knight Ridder.

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