http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/ 
HotWired, The Netizen

Waiting Game
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
Washington, DC, 5 August

   In a last-minute legislative crunch before the summer recess, House
   Republicans on Friday outmaneuvered their Democratic counterparts and
   coughed up a surprisingly reasonable anti-terrorism bill, which the
   Senate will act on when Congress returns next month.

   Deleted from the legislation were many of the constitutionally sticky
   provisions the Dems had demanded, including broader wiretap authority
   for the Feds and warrantless short-term wiretaps.

   But the Senate has begun its own four-week vacation without voting on
   the measure, and they'll have plenty of time to reintroduce the
   missing language when they return.

   The outlook, frankly, is dismal, says Don Haines of the American Civil
   Liberties Union. "The Senate has been much more interested in giving
   the FBI a blank check. They've been much more sympathetic to
   increasing wiretapping. They've been much less interested in
   protecting privacy," Haines said.

   Senate Democrats in particular - relishing their new role as
   crime-busters - have been downplaying privacy and censorship issues,
   often while shrilly fanning Net hysteria.
   
   Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has been scoring political   
   points by railing against bomb-making informational materials online;
   recently, she introduced legislation making it illegal to distribute
   such information in print or via the Internet.
   
   Meanwhile, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) - a staunch opponent of 
   the Communications Decency Act - continues to tout his Digital
   Telephony legislation, which he shepherded through Congress in 1994.
   "I was proud to have worked with the FBI director to ensure passage of
   the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, sometimes
   called the Digital Telephony law," Leahy said recently.

   The ACLU's Haines notes a disturbing aspect of the current climate in 
   DC: "The administration is playing a very dirty game here ...       
   '[S]upport what we want, or when the next plane goes down, we may
   blame you because you didn't give us what we want.' That's why the FBI
   is hauling off the shelf all these anti-privacy surveillance
   initiatives that it's unable to get Congress interested in. Encryption
   is one of those." (Restrictions on the free use of encryption had been
   part of the anti-terrorism package the White House announced a week
   ago, but the measure was shelved by the suddenly Net-friendly House
   Republicans.)

   Perhaps Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party's candidate for president,
   had it right when he said last week: "If we're not careful, half of
   the Bill of Rights will fall victim to the frantic desire of
   Republican and Democratic politicians to appear tough on terrorists."
             
   The last few years have seen several murderous acts of terror on
   American soil - and now, with the explosion of TWA Flight 800, in
   American airspace. Americans should brace themselves for even more
   terrorist attacks in the future, either by well-organized
   international groups or by home-grown wackos. Whether the terror is
   foreign or domestic in origin, one thing's for certain: cries for a
   government crackdown will mount.
                  
   But by granting their government police-state powers, Americans will
   have awarded terrorists their first substantial victory in the United
   States.

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