May 2, 2003

ATLANTA: Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) President Phil Kent today called on Congress to "close the door on unfettered snooping on 280 million American citizens through electronic means." On the heels of a congressional rejection of the proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program initially included in the Homeland Security Act, as well as recent debate on the sunset provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, SLF's constitutional attorneys continue to raise questions nationally about constitutional liberties (privacy, speech, association) potentially endangered by proposed federal government efforts.

"Make no mistake - the war on terrorism and the effort to protect the American people from external threats are critical to national security, however, we must balance at all times the fact that national security is important, but freedom is essential," said Kent.

This week, Bush administration officials and leading Senate Republicans again raised the specter that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon would be allowed to access personal and financial records via Internet service providers, banks, credit card companies, and even healthcare and insurance providers. Earlier this year, Congress rejected provisions in the Homeland Security Act to allow the Pentagon to operate the Total Information Awareness program, headed by former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal. TIA would have enabled snooping capabilities similar to those proposed this week.

"The dramatic expansion of federal power for the war on terrorism should last no longer than the war itself, if we enforce our borders as a national security issue," said Kent. "The new measures alone, focusing federal investigative power on direct threats to national security, will not suffice unless the new resolve of the American people is directed by enforcement of lax immigration laws.

"Otherwise, our federal government will have established the world's largest electronic dragnet, making criminal suspects of 280 million Americans," said Kent. "Surely there is a better way to target and gather information on real threats here and abroad without subjecting constitutional liberties to uncontrolled intelligence-gathering techniques."

Kent points out that, in the TIA provisions of the Homeland Security Act, individual American citizens are not allowed to access any information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "When law-abiding Americans cannot find out through legitimate channels what information the government has gathered on them, we have tragically cut off an important check against government abuse of power," said Kent. "This aspect must be stopped or modified by Congress before it becomes law."

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