civil liberties.
Oops. So sorry. Wrong guy. The FBI is now apologizing to the American attorney it jailed in connection with the Madrid train bombings by terrorists. You scarcely could ask for a more, well, arresting example of what makes some of us so nervous about the Patriot Act and the Bush administration's broad expansion of police powers in the name of combating terrorism.
Fortunately for the Oregon lawyer - facing indefinite detention as a material witness - Spanish investigators doubted his fingerprints matched the one they found. They kept looking, found a better match and arrested someone else - an Algerian man. Eventually, the FBI conceded it had nabbed the wrong guy.
This brings us around to the Patriot Act and the threat it poses to the rights of all Americans.
The law gives police agencies broad license to investigate anyone suspected of any involvement in terrorism. They can snoop through your bank records, obtain records of books and magazines bought or checked out at the library, tap your phone or place your name on a government "watch list." Your family, friends or customers may be investigated for their connections to you. You might even be arrested, your picture beamed out across the Internet; absent any specific charges, you could even be jailed indefinitely with limited ability to petition the courts for help.
President Bush and his administration not only defend such measures, but they also seek to have extraordinary police powers extended. They answer concerns about threats to civil liberties with glib assurances that they're only interested in catching evil people, not law-abiding Americans.
Brandon Mayfield is but the latest reminder of our government's abysmal record when it comes to distinguishing lawful Americans from criminals. The FBI, in particular, has a troublesome history when it comes to investigating innocent Americans. From investigating Martin Luther King Jr. as a communist to blaming Richard Jewell for the Olympic bombing in Atlanta to conjuring a spy case against nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, the FBI has too often shown its certainty isn't always based on fact. We have an established system of due process for a reason.
Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights full knowing the potential for overly powerful governments to trample the rights of citizens. We discard the safeguards they gave us at our peril.
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