There is an excellent article today by Declan McCullach on recent Congressional actions to stem the privacy invasion caused by the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 legislation. Here are three examples, taken directly from the article.

• By a 309 to 118 vote last Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that would essentially block part of the USA Patriot Act that permitted police to seek a court order that let them surreptitiously enter a home or business. The amendment to the Commerce, Justice and State spending bill would not repeal the "secret search" law but instead would deny federal agencies any funds that could be used in order to take advantage of it.

Why are Bush and Ashcroft insisting that Haitians who have been granted asylum continue to be detained? This makes us so angry.

Four months ago, immigration lawyers rejoiced after a federal judge granted political asylum to two men who scrambled to shore with more than 200 Haitians when their boat ran aground near this city last year. One man had left Haiti after the killings of his brother and sister. Another had fled after a pro-government mob attacked his house.

....Today, the two Haitian men are still behind bars, even though the judge determined that their fears of persecution were legitimate. Federal prosecutors have appealed that ruling and government officials have ordered the continued detention of the two men until the appeal is decided, a process that could take several months.

Patriot Watch brings us this important action alert by the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights--Ashcroft is attempting to deny asylum to women who are victims of domestic abuse and gender-based persecution.

Instapundit is wary of homeland security and new anti-terror legislation. Check out his Tech Central Station column, Defense - Terror War? What Terror War?.

It's Not Just Terrorists Who Take Advantage: Someone will propose new "Antiterrorism" legislation. It will be full of things off of bureaucrats' wish lists. They will be things that wouldn't have prevented these attacks even if they had been in place yesterday. Many of them will be civil-liberties disasters. Some of them will actually promote the kind of ill-feeling that breeds terrorism. That's what happened in 1996. Let's not let it happen again.

It's nice to have Glenn on our side on this one.

We wrote last week about a new government surveillance system called "combat zones." Noah Shachtman has a lot more on the system in this week's Village Voice.

Its architects at the Pentagon say it will help protect our troops in cities like Baghdad, where for the past few weeks fleeting attackers have been picking off American fighters in ones and twos. But defense experts believe the surveillance effort has a second, more sinister, purpose: to keep entire cities under an omnipresent, unblinking eye.

....The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to "track everything that moves." "This gives the U.S. government capabilities Big Brother only pretended to have," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense think tank. "Before, we said Big Brother's watching. But he really wasn't, because there was too much to watch."

Emma Goldman of Notes on the Atrocities deserves a major award for her new dossier on John Ashcroft. It is likely the most comprehensive, sourced analysis of him available in one place. We can only guess at the number of hours and days it took her to compile this. It's generously hosted by the folks at genfoods.

After Ashcroft's biographical data, these sections follow:

Abuses
Threats
Persuing a Personal Agenda
Civil Liberty Violations
Theocratic Leanings
Paranoia and Secrecy

From the Introduction:

Under John Ashcroft, the Attorney General has become an activist position, prosecuting citizens on a narrow agenda of social issues Ashcroft finds distasteful, often against the wishes of states. Under the auspices of federal narcotics laws, Ashcroft has pursued doctors in Oregon (under the state-passed and judicially-sanctioned "Death with Dignity" law) and medical marijuana users in California. Meanwhile, he gave broad rights to gun users.

Since 9/11, Ashcroft has made an all-out assault on civil liberties, foisting TIPS and TIA, racial profiling, immigrant and prisoner abuses, and first amendment violations on the public. He has threatened Congress and the citizens he is supposed to protect. His theocratic leanings, sanctimonious anti-nudity and anti-gay positions are inconsistent with a man who, as Attorney General, is supposed merely to enforce law, not interpret and create it.

It's too long to read at one sitting, particularly on a workday, so bookmark it and return often until you've read the whole thing. Still to come are similar dossiers on Rumsfeld and Cheney. Thanks, Emma.

Conservative, unsuccessful former judicial nominee Robert Bork has a new commentary out on civil liberties. If you can stand to make your way through it, here it is. Actually, you should make your way through it, just to see what we avoided by Bork not making it through the confirmation process--and what may lie ahead if some of Bush's nominees get through. For a capsulized view and good analysis, check out Balasubramania's Mania.

First, Bork condones the use of race in law enforcement, noting the absence of evidence that law enforcement relies "excessively" on race. Although I don't know firsthand, I'm willing to bet that in response to the Grutter/Gratz decisions, Bork decried any use of race as a factor in admissions. Second, Bork argues that the current administration's terrorism combatting efforts have not gone far enough, implying that the efforts have been hampered by the lack of adequate tools: "The Bush administration's efforts to protect American security . . . . are indeed vulnerable--for not going far enough."

LA Weekly has a series of articles this week on Bush and Ashcroft and their attempted hijacking of our civil liberties. Bruce Shapiro writes The War on Due Process--about how Bushcroft, with the power of the Patriot Act, is trying to conquer the legal system.

John Powers writes Taking Liberties, about which of our rights are being threatened, and how to take them back. Jeffrey Anderson writes on how Homeland Security has turned El Centro’s detention center into purgatory for immigrants.

Christine Pelisek writes about library monitors. She does double duty with The Incredible Shrinking Liberties List.

Other featured articles address the Supreme Court sodomy case, here and here, and the death penalty reversal based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

Talk about a jam packed issue, don't miss this one.

A new website, in association with the MIT Technology Lab will keep tabs on government. The program, aptly called the Government Information Awareness Program (GIA), debuts today. You can access its website here.

Its creators hope it will become a Google of government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of information to help citizens track their leaders as effectively as their leaders track them.

GIA hopes to create an enormous but self-sustaining community where users do the work of keeping it running and credible. Its creators at Media Lab -- a research center whose eclectic projects bridge technology, the arts and media -- view the project not just as a way to pool the collective wisdom of government watchdogs but also as a tool to counter new government technologies that are consolidating information about citizens.

Our friendly Pentagon is developing a new urban surveillance system that will track and record every vehicle within a city. It's called "Combat Zones That See."

The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a city.

Named "Combat Zones That See," the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect its troops abroad and fight in cities overseas. Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could be adapted easily to spy on Americans.

The program is the brainchild of DARPA. In addition to its planned massive database of personal records, DARPA is currently at work on a system that would create "a computerized diary that would record and analyze everything a person says, sees, hears, reads or touches."

While DARPA denies it intends these programs for civilian use, scientists are concerned:

Chisum Lee writes in this week's Village Voice that New York activists are fighting back against repressive police measures aimed at protesters.

Look what's in store when Bush visits for the Republican 2004 Convention:

Sharpshooters will man the rooftops. Counterterrorism agents will patrol in civilian guise. Bomb squads will case subway tunnels. At least this much will be certain when the Republican National Convention comes to Madison Square Garden next year, say two former NYPD officials who helped oversee previous conventions there.

....For the NYPD, in concert with the Secret Service and a slew of federal agencies, maintaining order will be a daunting challenge, and not just because of the obvious terrorism concerns. The Bush administration's policies have roused hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to some of the most heated agitation the city has seen in decades.

We're glad to see New Yorkers fighting back:

Angry protesters have claimed police are meeting these demonstrations with new heights of repressiveness, amounting to a pattern of unfounded arrests and abuses. Now, with an eye to the near future, they are pushing back. A look at the activist scene today reveals a number of challenges that together form a multipronged effort to free the streets. New Yorkers want their right to protest to be as firmly entrenched as the police presence will be come 2004.

Calling all bookstore owners....

From Durango, Colorado to Vermont, bookshop owners like Pete and Andrea of Maria's Books are participating in a petition drive to garner Congressional support for the Freedom to Read Protection Act. Even the Durango public library is making petitions available to patrons.

The bill, introduced March 6 by Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., seeks to overturn powers granted to federal investigators by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Under that provision, terrorism investigators can obtain customer-purchase and library-usage records, and monitor Internet traffic at public computer terminals without notification or a court order. A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate.

So far the bill has 117 sponsors, only 13 of whom are Republicans.