In February 1950, a lowly senator from Wisconsin burst into the forefront of the American conscience when he claimed to be in possession of a list of 205 U.S. citizens who were card-carrying members of the Communist Party.
Joseph McCarthy used brutally oppressive tactics to ferret out what he claimed to be threats to the United States during the Red Scare. Needless to say, there aren't too many schools named after him today.
Hopefully, in this age, the government would not be permitted to violate civil rights in such a manner.
Imagine the FBI's G-men secretly rifling through personal records, in order to prove membership to a conspiracy. After gathering what information they could, the men vanish, and the citizen is neither notified of their classification as a suspect, nor made aware of the information gathered to further their prosecution.
Creepy.
Unfortunately, it's a reality.
The 342-page USA Patriot Act was drafted, debated and passed by Congress only 45 days after the attacks of Sept. 11. This hasty, shoddy legislation gives expanded powers to government in order to counter terrorism, including secretly collecting information about citizens without demonstrating probable cause.
While the Red Scare may have been nothing more than a nationwide epidemic of paranoia, the threat of terrorism is real. But lately, our own government is posing as much a threat to freedom as the terrorists that are overtly trying to overthrow our way of life.
"It isn't made up; it's true. The administration says that we need to take extraordinary measures to combat this danger that we're in. The ACLU says that yes, we need to take these measures, but we don't have to give up our freedoms to do it," said Stan Furman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, during a telephone interview.
"It isn't that it's going to happen to the ordinary student," said Furman. "But suppose you have a student that is studying terrorism, [who] goes to the library, goes to Web pages [and] goes to sources to gather information about how terrorists act...That might give the government [a reason] to be suspicious of such a person."
Unfortunately, this is not entirely the heart of the real debate. The Patriot Act remains a virtual mystery to people - people that could potentially be under scrutiny without their knowledge.
According to a recent poll conducted Aug. 4 - 22 by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, only 15 percent of respondents said they were "extremely familiar" with the Patriot Act.
While 57 percent of those polled said they were "familiar" with the act, "only 31 percent can pass a quiz on its specifics," the study concluded.
Efforts to enlighten the public as to their government's shady dealings are long overdue, but forthcoming. This Thursday, the ACLU will begin an effort to reach the public, who seem content to lie on the couch while pirates and spooks run their nation.
"The Freedom Files" is a series of documentaries, broadcast over streaming video and satellite, illustrating how civil liberties are under attack by the Patriot Act. It coincides with the ongoing review of the legislation by Congress.
While this will ultimately raise public awareness, it also points out the tragic apathy of Americans. Our own government has been acting with as much malice as the deranged maniacs they claim to oppose. And this travesty garnered less of our attention than a cable outage.
It's fantastic that an organization is innovative enough to find a way to reach a population of disinterested armchair jockeys. But using the television to feed us a message about our very liberty is like hiding an obese man's heart medication in a jelly doughnut.
Arthur Martori is a journalism senior. Be very careful about sending comments to arthur.martori@asu.edu.
