Illegal search and seizure

By Justin Fields
Collegian Reporter
September 20, 2006

Did anyone realize that this past weekend was the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution? If you are anything like me, you probably went on along your way, blissfully unaware that this was the day that commemorates the birth of our most sacred national document. To most of us, the Constitution is like the sun that gives us life or the air that allows us to breath; we assume they will be around forever, constantly sustaining us. I hate being the bearer of bad news, but suns do burn out and air does get polluted, just as our Constitution is under attack. Who, pray tell, is the assailant? The culprit is none other than the USA PATRIOT Act.

About 220 years ago, our founding fathers were sitting around Independence Hall, trying to figure out how to sustain a newly independent America. Among all of the things they wanted to secure as freedoms in this new country was the idea that the government should not be allowed to search nor seize private property or private papers from its citizens without having reasonable cause. Washington and his crew weren’t very keen on this idea, so they instituted a safeguard against such practices in the Bill of Rights, namely, the Fourth Amendment.

Flash forward to our present time. It’s as if history has begun to repeat itself. Instead of Writs of Assistance (as the British would deliver upon searching a home), we have Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which states that your personal records can be accessed under the Foreign Intelligence Act. It has come to be known more commonly as the Library Records provision because this is the portion of the act that states the government can look into people’s library records to see what they’ve been checking out. The FBI and other federal groups no longer need to have probable cause for searches. This, my friends, is wrong.

Worse yet, the proviso gags those subpoenaed to turn over records from saying that they have been ordered to do so. This means that all of your favorite book stores, libraries or Web sites could be sharing your info and you wouldn’t be informed. This proviso is nothing short of sacrilege when we think of what our founding fathers intended; it is little more than spitting on the Constitution.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, “He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both.”

fieldsj1@lasalle.edu