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When the USA Patriot Act* was rushed into law after the September 11 attacks, the erosion of civil liberties the Act represented--the broad powers it gave law enforcement to spy on people, and the creation of the dangerously ill-defined crime of "domestic terrorism"--met with little detailed scrutiny or principled challenge from major media.
says that several countries are using the U.S.-led war against terrorism as a justification to ignore human rights. Human Rights Watch says that Russia, Egypt, Israel, China, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Uzbekistan have all cracked down on domestic opponents in the name of terrorism.
That's a bold tweak on the report, which singled out the United States for "inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world." A less euphemistic account in the London Guardian (1/17/02) noted the report's charge that "dictators 'need do nothing more than photocopy' measures introduced by the Bush administration."
A subsequent Human Rights Watch report (8/02) documenting violations of due process--including arbitrary, secret detentions--in the treatment of post-9/11 detainees was largely ignored (FAIR Advisory, 8/26/02). Some might attribute the lack of pickup to the fact that the victims described were mainly Muslim noncitizens. That wouldn't excuse it, clearly, or explain the similar lack of interest when U.S. citizens were caught up in the sweep.
Washington, D.C., police carried out an evidently illegal and politically motivated detention in September 2002, arresting en masse hundreds of participants in a non-violent protest against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with bystanders and journalists (Extra!, 11-12/02). The arrested were handcuffed and shackled, denied food and legal counsel.
With few exceptions, media reaction was either to normalize such abuse, as when a CNN reporter (9/27/02) explained that mass arrests have "become part of the ritual" at international finance meetings, or to suggest abuse was earned, as on MSNBC (9/27/02), where "the question is, do the demonstrators have some legitimate gripes or are they just a bunch of opportunistic hooligans?"
Media downplayed the impact of measures like the Protect America Act of 2007, which allowed near open-ended surveillance of emails and phone calls, by interpreting them narrowly, as involving only "communications between potential terrorists" (CBS Evening News, 8/4/07), or "government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects" (ABC World News, 8/5/07), explained Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center for Justice. And that's a key problem.
"As soon as you say somebody's a terrorism suspect, well, that's the end of it, we don't need to worry about them," Huq told CounterSpin (8/10/07):
It's not that media have been silent. A 2008 New York Times editorial (3/6/08) railed against "unrelenting assaults on civil rights, civil liberties and the balance of powers in government." But opportunities to translate that espoused concern into reporting were missed. Neither the Times nor the Washington Post, for example, featured civil liberties in their ongoing "issue trackers" of the year's presidential candidates (Extra!, 5-6/08).
The same year, the FBI granted itself alarming operational changes, including, as the Washington Post duly reported (10/4/08), allowing "investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities...without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization."
But editorially the Post (9/29/08) was on board with giving agents "flexibility" to "thwart terrorist plots, [rather] than apprehend perpetrators after they've struck." They chastised the agency mildly for secrecy; it was unnecessary, "given that the guidelines will be made public after their adoption." The New York Times (10/4/08) also reported the new rules, but still managed to mislead with a headline referring to the revision of "FBI Guidelines for Terrorism Investigations."
That's the thing: Media submerge the reality of the assault on civil rights every time they report the state's overreaches as being about "terror-fighting tools," as the AP (5/26/11) described Patriot Act provisions. Under a system of civil liberties, people are regarded as criminals after being convicted of crimes--not deemed to be so beforehand to facilitate stripping them of rights.
The effect is hardly undone by the occasional suggestion (New York Times, 2/13/11) that laws like Patriot "should be carefully re-examined before being hastily reauthorized year after year."
Likewise, when the FBI pushed in June to expand its power yet again--seeking more leeway to infiltrate groups, search databases without making a record of it, and root through people's trash for material to pressure them to become informants--the New York Times (6/19/11) was firmly against it.
But after a decade of destruction, handwringing that "changes have occurred without any real discussion about whether the supposed added security is worth the harm to civil liberties" sounds worse than weak--coming from an outlet that might have been expected to provide the forum for such discussion.
* The name was originally an acronym, standing for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
When the USA Patriot Act* was rushed into law after the September 11 attacks, the erosion of civil liberties the Act represented--the broad powers it gave law enforcement to spy on people, and the creation of the dangerously ill-defined crime of "domestic terrorism"--met with little detailed scrutiny or principled challenge from major media.
says that several countries are using the U.S.-led war against terrorism as a justification to ignore human rights. Human Rights Watch says that Russia, Egypt, Israel, China, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Uzbekistan have all cracked down on domestic opponents in the name of terrorism.
That's a bold tweak on the report, which singled out the United States for "inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world." A less euphemistic account in the London Guardian (1/17/02) noted the report's charge that "dictators 'need do nothing more than photocopy' measures introduced by the Bush administration."
A subsequent Human Rights Watch report (8/02) documenting violations of due process--including arbitrary, secret detentions--in the treatment of post-9/11 detainees was largely ignored (FAIR Advisory, 8/26/02). Some might attribute the lack of pickup to the fact that the victims described were mainly Muslim noncitizens. That wouldn't excuse it, clearly, or explain the similar lack of interest when U.S. citizens were caught up in the sweep.
Washington, D.C., police carried out an evidently illegal and politically motivated detention in September 2002, arresting en masse hundreds of participants in a non-violent protest against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with bystanders and journalists (Extra!, 11-12/02). The arrested were handcuffed and shackled, denied food and legal counsel.
With few exceptions, media reaction was either to normalize such abuse, as when a CNN reporter (9/27/02) explained that mass arrests have "become part of the ritual" at international finance meetings, or to suggest abuse was earned, as on MSNBC (9/27/02), where "the question is, do the demonstrators have some legitimate gripes or are they just a bunch of opportunistic hooligans?"
Media downplayed the impact of measures like the Protect America Act of 2007, which allowed near open-ended surveillance of emails and phone calls, by interpreting them narrowly, as involving only "communications between potential terrorists" (CBS Evening News, 8/4/07), or "government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects" (ABC World News, 8/5/07), explained Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center for Justice. And that's a key problem.
"As soon as you say somebody's a terrorism suspect, well, that's the end of it, we don't need to worry about them," Huq told CounterSpin (8/10/07):
It's not that media have been silent. A 2008 New York Times editorial (3/6/08) railed against "unrelenting assaults on civil rights, civil liberties and the balance of powers in government." But opportunities to translate that espoused concern into reporting were missed. Neither the Times nor the Washington Post, for example, featured civil liberties in their ongoing "issue trackers" of the year's presidential candidates (Extra!, 5-6/08).
The same year, the FBI granted itself alarming operational changes, including, as the Washington Post duly reported (10/4/08), allowing "investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities...without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization."
But editorially the Post (9/29/08) was on board with giving agents "flexibility" to "thwart terrorist plots, [rather] than apprehend perpetrators after they've struck." They chastised the agency mildly for secrecy; it was unnecessary, "given that the guidelines will be made public after their adoption." The New York Times (10/4/08) also reported the new rules, but still managed to mislead with a headline referring to the revision of "FBI Guidelines for Terrorism Investigations."
That's the thing: Media submerge the reality of the assault on civil rights every time they report the state's overreaches as being about "terror-fighting tools," as the AP (5/26/11) described Patriot Act provisions. Under a system of civil liberties, people are regarded as criminals after being convicted of crimes--not deemed to be so beforehand to facilitate stripping them of rights.
The effect is hardly undone by the occasional suggestion (New York Times, 2/13/11) that laws like Patriot "should be carefully re-examined before being hastily reauthorized year after year."
Likewise, when the FBI pushed in June to expand its power yet again--seeking more leeway to infiltrate groups, search databases without making a record of it, and root through people's trash for material to pressure them to become informants--the New York Times (6/19/11) was firmly against it.
But after a decade of destruction, handwringing that "changes have occurred without any real discussion about whether the supposed added security is worth the harm to civil liberties" sounds worse than weak--coming from an outlet that might have been expected to provide the forum for such discussion.
* The name was originally an acronym, standing for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
When the USA Patriot Act* was rushed into law after the September 11 attacks, the erosion of civil liberties the Act represented--the broad powers it gave law enforcement to spy on people, and the creation of the dangerously ill-defined crime of "domestic terrorism"--met with little detailed scrutiny or principled challenge from major media.
says that several countries are using the U.S.-led war against terrorism as a justification to ignore human rights. Human Rights Watch says that Russia, Egypt, Israel, China, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Uzbekistan have all cracked down on domestic opponents in the name of terrorism.
That's a bold tweak on the report, which singled out the United States for "inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world." A less euphemistic account in the London Guardian (1/17/02) noted the report's charge that "dictators 'need do nothing more than photocopy' measures introduced by the Bush administration."
A subsequent Human Rights Watch report (8/02) documenting violations of due process--including arbitrary, secret detentions--in the treatment of post-9/11 detainees was largely ignored (FAIR Advisory, 8/26/02). Some might attribute the lack of pickup to the fact that the victims described were mainly Muslim noncitizens. That wouldn't excuse it, clearly, or explain the similar lack of interest when U.S. citizens were caught up in the sweep.
Washington, D.C., police carried out an evidently illegal and politically motivated detention in September 2002, arresting en masse hundreds of participants in a non-violent protest against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with bystanders and journalists (Extra!, 11-12/02). The arrested were handcuffed and shackled, denied food and legal counsel.
With few exceptions, media reaction was either to normalize such abuse, as when a CNN reporter (9/27/02) explained that mass arrests have "become part of the ritual" at international finance meetings, or to suggest abuse was earned, as on MSNBC (9/27/02), where "the question is, do the demonstrators have some legitimate gripes or are they just a bunch of opportunistic hooligans?"
Media downplayed the impact of measures like the Protect America Act of 2007, which allowed near open-ended surveillance of emails and phone calls, by interpreting them narrowly, as involving only "communications between potential terrorists" (CBS Evening News, 8/4/07), or "government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects" (ABC World News, 8/5/07), explained Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center for Justice. And that's a key problem.
"As soon as you say somebody's a terrorism suspect, well, that's the end of it, we don't need to worry about them," Huq told CounterSpin (8/10/07):
It's not that media have been silent. A 2008 New York Times editorial (3/6/08) railed against "unrelenting assaults on civil rights, civil liberties and the balance of powers in government." But opportunities to translate that espoused concern into reporting were missed. Neither the Times nor the Washington Post, for example, featured civil liberties in their ongoing "issue trackers" of the year's presidential candidates (Extra!, 5-6/08).
The same year, the FBI granted itself alarming operational changes, including, as the Washington Post duly reported (10/4/08), allowing "investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities...without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization."
But editorially the Post (9/29/08) was on board with giving agents "flexibility" to "thwart terrorist plots, [rather] than apprehend perpetrators after they've struck." They chastised the agency mildly for secrecy; it was unnecessary, "given that the guidelines will be made public after their adoption." The New York Times (10/4/08) also reported the new rules, but still managed to mislead with a headline referring to the revision of "FBI Guidelines for Terrorism Investigations."
That's the thing: Media submerge the reality of the assault on civil rights every time they report the state's overreaches as being about "terror-fighting tools," as the AP (5/26/11) described Patriot Act provisions. Under a system of civil liberties, people are regarded as criminals after being convicted of crimes--not deemed to be so beforehand to facilitate stripping them of rights.
The effect is hardly undone by the occasional suggestion (New York Times, 2/13/11) that laws like Patriot "should be carefully re-examined before being hastily reauthorized year after year."
Likewise, when the FBI pushed in June to expand its power yet again--seeking more leeway to infiltrate groups, search databases without making a record of it, and root through people's trash for material to pressure them to become informants--the New York Times (6/19/11) was firmly against it.
But after a decade of destruction, handwringing that "changes have occurred without any real discussion about whether the supposed added security is worth the harm to civil liberties" sounds worse than weak--coming from an outlet that might have been expected to provide the forum for such discussion.
* The name was originally an acronym, standing for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."