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The Clampdown on Civil Liberties: Not Just an American Problem

By Matt Zeitlin - Jun 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 am

In light of Guantanamo, telecom immunity, extraordinary rendition, warantless wiretapping and the general reduction in civil liberties since 9/11, one couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the United States had fallen the most when it comes to civil liberties. But according to an Economist report, Britain is doing poorly too:

The charge sheet against the government is long and damning. Besides its 42-day detention proposals (and earlier, failed plans to imprison suspects for 90 days), it is accused of colluding with America to transport terrorist suspects to secret prisons abroad. It has created new crimes, such as glorifying terrorism or inciting religious hatred, that, say critics, dampen freedom of speech. Those who breach one of its Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, introduced in 1998, can be jailed for things that are not illegal in themselves (such as visiting a forbidden part of town or talking to certain people). In 2005 the prohibition on double jeopardy—trying a person twice for the same offence—was removed for serious offences. The government has tried to cut back the scope of trial by jury.

Along with the new crimes have come new ways of detecting them. Millions of publicly and privately owned closed-circuit television cameras (no one is sure precisely how many) monitor town centres. The latest innovation is unmanned, miniature aircraft (adapted from army models) that can loiter over trouble spots, feeding images to police on the ground.

The British example shows just how vigilant citizens have to be about protecting their civil liberties. Remember that it’s Britain’s left-wing party that’s implementing all these policies, and that British Conservatives are probably only opposing Brown and Labour because of cheap political opportunism. One can imagine the Tories, after having been in power for 11 years, pushing similar encroachments on liberty. More worringly, one could very well imagine an Obama presidency, or a Democratic presidency afterwards, doing much the same thing. After all, it was Republicans who, throughout the nineties, professed to be very concerned about blown-up charges of executive overreach during the Clinton administration, and one can expect them to revert to their pseudo-libertarian ways if and when they’re faced with Obama in the White House and Democratic majorities in Congress.

When debating telecom immunity, Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) spoke in defense of protecting the telecoms and quoted Jefferson, saying that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Not only is the quote probably misattributed to Jefferson, it also means the exact opposite of what Franks intended. The quote reminds us that the powerful will constantly try to impinge of the freedom of the people, and so they must be eternally vigilant. And the British example shows that we shouldn’t tamp down our vigilance just because one party or another happens to be in office.