A Familiar Madness (Letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Letters to the editor: 5/9/04

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A familiar madness

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan mischaracterizes City Council's anti-USA Patriot Act resolutions as disrupting law enforcement ("The Patriot Act Is Not What They Say," May 2 Forum). The resolutions don't stop any laws from being enforced but show that Pittsburghers oppose fishing expeditions against everyone's rights. She should appreciate the cooperation of Pittsburghers in getting their city to take a stand, not just the cooperation among law enforcement agencies.

Ms. Buchanan says opponents of the Patriot Act think the problem is with agents acting without courts. No, the problem is bigger. No matter who authorizes them, "sneak and peek" searches put us all under an invisible microscope used by paranoid minds.

Real law enforcement is not shakedowns motivated by discrimination and fear. Ms. Buchanan assumes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives oversight but doesn't tell us its origins in the Church Committee's investigation of FBI abuses. Except instead of ending the abuses they were merely regulated.

In the 1990s FISA put activist Kurt Stand behind bars because a court let the FBI entrap him based only on his name appearing in an old East German file. Kurt's children are being supported by the Rosenberg Fund for Children, set up by Julius and Ethel's son. It's no coincidence that victims of 1950s paranoia are helping today's victims.

For all the technology and efficiency the government hypes, we also need to look at what's behind their use. It took decades for the Church and Pike committees to finally form after the American people exposed pervasive abuse.

The resolutions don't stop real law enforcement but show we are standing up to a familiar madness.

S. SALEH WAZIRUDDIN
ShadysideEditor's note: The writer is chair of the Anti-Discrimination Committee of the Islamic Council of Greater Pittsburgh