The conservatives come to the debate from a different perspective than the ACLU's Murphy, of course, which means that some of their concerns don't even register with their liberal counterparts. Like the fear that the government wants to begin recording how many guns citizens own; or that the surveillance of antiwar protesters today will lead to surveillance of antiabortion protesters tomorrow. Police powers have a way of mission-creeping, they said; racketeering laws were passed to go after the mob, but have since been used against antiabortion groups. They passed because lawmakers thought, "Do whatever you want to guys named Guido -- that doesn't affect me," Norquist said. "Someday Hillary Clinton's going to be attorney general and I hope conservatives keep that in mind."

"Or president!" Murphy exclaimed, flustering Norquist a bit.

Comstock rebutted Norquist's logic, saying, "You can't pass laws based on the fact that you think there are going to be corrupt people who misuse the system some day."

All four activists expressed shock and awe at the recent report that some in the Senate were considering the removal of the "sunset" provisions in the PATRIOT Act, which will phase out the powers granted the government in 2005.

"I would support legislation that would sunset all legislation passed during a time of war," Norquist said. "And I would vote against any legislation somebody felt they had to name 'PATRIOT,'" which no one would have felt the need to do "if it were a worthwhile bill," he said. That name -- an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" -- "was used to mau-mau people because it looks bad on a 30-second commercial to have voted against it."

The PATRIOT laws will not affect law-abiding citizens, seconded Comstock's deputy, Mark Corallo, "not unless you're a foreign spy or a terrorist." Comstock took issue with the idea that the government's powers had been expanded -- she thinks they've simply been refined -- and feels as though the powers are often misrepresented. Take, for instance, the "roving wiretap" invoked by PATRIOT critics. "They're constantly making it sound like we're roving the country listening to everyone's calls," she said. Rather, the roving applies to distinct individuals -- a suspected agent of a foreign government or power or terrorist group -- on whom law enforcement has received permission to conduct surveillance.

"The roving wiretap allows us to keep up with the technology," she said. "We know they change phones. This way, when Mohammed Atta changes phones on his way to Maine we don't have to stop in court to get new warrant" since the wiretap is specific to the suspect -- and not the phone.

Corallo says criticism about the FBI's access to library records is equally mischaracterized. The new law "allows the FBI to seek a warrant for certain business records," and that can include library activities, "but only if the FBI can convince a judge that the subject of an investigation is a foreign spy or a member of a terrorist organization." Before Sept. 11 the FBI couldn't monitor what suspected terrorists were doing at the public library computers, and 9/11 terrorists freely sent e-mails to each other that way. "They knew we couldn't go in there," Corallo says. "They used it as a safe haven." But the idea that the FBI will be spying willy-nilly on the public's reading habits is false, he says. "The FBI is specifically prohibited from investigating U.S. persons based on activities protected by the First Amendment, and certainly reading falls into that category."

But the PATRIOT Act -- and those specific provisions -- weren't the only issues that Murphy and the conservative activists slammed. These included the omniscient Total Information Awareness system, a Pentagon-run multi-agency, multilingual database that will detect certain possibly terrorism-related transactions; the second Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II) soon to be implemented by the Transportation Security Administration, which will perform background checks and conduct risk assessments on airline passengers; and of course, the sequel to the PATRIOT Act, -- dubbed PATRIOT II or, as Barr called it in full horror-movie fashion, "Son of PATRIOT" -- a draft of which was leaked in February to the Center for Public Integrity.

In its January draft form, PATRIOT II seemed to propose giving the attorney general authority to strip Americans of their citizenship based on their connections to organizations designated terrorist, and to create a DNA database for a broad range of individuals including those suspected of being members of terrorist groups. Comstock reiterates that the January draft was just that, a draft and that now, three months later, it has changed quite a bit. "There were things in there that aren't in play anymore," she says, noting that Justice Department lawyers would never propose a bill they thought couldn't pass constitutional muster.

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