Statement by Phil Kent, president, Prof. L. Lynn Hogue, Chair, Legal Advisory Board

November 11, 2002

"The proposed Homeland Security Act contains a Trojan horse that would amend the Privacy Act of 1974 and allow unprecedented military and intelligence surveillance of the commercial transactions of ordinary Americans - a terrifying prospect based on the track record of certain law enforcement and intelligence agencies in our nation.

It is high time to ask how far the U.S. government should be allowed to pry into the personal and financial information of ordinary Americans without a warrant or even the mere suspicion of illegal activity - the world's largest electronic dragnet.

The nation began its descent down the slippery slope of repudiating constitutional rights by allowing the ludicrous airport screening measures proposed by Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta. From the confiscation of a Congressional Medal of Honor, to the regular body searches of elderly Americans, to the shoe screening of uniformed U.S. military personnel, the airport screening system nevertheless strictly prohibits any whiff of potential "profiling" of individuals who resemble the Middle Eastern terrorist with whom we are currently at war. The system is, simply put, crazy.

Congress has uncovered dangerous rogue operations within the executive branch both in the 1980s and 1990s - operations that contravened the U.S. Constitution, federal law, and the express will of the Congress. To now entrust a nationwide electronic monitoring capability unknown and hardly understood by the nation's lawmakers to individuals with ties to past rogue operations is craziness on steroids. Specifically, the Pentagon-sponsored Total Information Awareness (TIA) project is headed by disgraced Admiral John Poindexter, of Iran-Contra infamy.

In its haste to develop a logical, responsible national security framework, the Congress must consider that the privacy of American citizens - constitutionally protected and sacrosanct from the prying eyes of government short of proven illegal activity - will become the first casualty in the war on terrorism. We will be presented with the argument that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide and, therefore, nothing to fear." That argument assumes, in the fashion of the KGB and Gestapo, that government eyes in some form are entitled to take these steps.

The TIA project is the proverbial Pandora's Box. Who is today's enemy? We may think we know the answer now. We don't know who tomorrow's enemy will be, and we can ill-afford to neglect the inevitable conclusion that tomorrow's "enemy of the state" could be individual American citizens."

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