TRI In The News
Civil Liberties Under Siege
From TribLive
It's a safe bet that no American was less surprised than John W. Whitehead was when Edward Snowden's revelations brought concerns raised by sweeping, high-tech government surveillance to the forefront of public debate.
Though the publication process for his new book, “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State” (SelectBooks), was too far along for it to deal with the Snowden story, it's likely to draw more attention than it would have had Snowden stayed on his National Security Agency contractor job, kept his mouth shut and never become a household name.
An attorney focused on constitutional law who has been co-counsel in several U.S. Supreme Court cases, Whitehead was an Army officer from 1969-71. He's a prolific author of books, magazine and journal articles, pamphlets and brochures; a frequent commentator for U.S. and international media; and the writer and director of an award-winning documentary video series.
In 1982, he established The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Va.-based nonprofit that provides pro bono legal representation for people denied civil liberties and human rights. Something of an absolutist regarding such matters, he's sometimes at odds with many on the right — for example, he takes a rather dim view of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision — but shares the fundamental conservative principle of insisting that government obey the Bill of Rights.
In “A Government of Wolves,” he contends that America, especially post-9/11, is being subtly, gradually transformed into a police state as government exploits people's fears. As a result, lines between foreign and domestic surveillance and between law-enforcement and military agencies are blurring, gutting the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure as use of mobile, high-tech body and license-plate scanners, drones and facial recognition systems increases.
Seeing worrisome parallels between British soldiers' warrantless invasions of Colonial American homes and U.S. government practices today, Whitehead writes that police are not “inherently ‘bad' or ‘evil.' However, in enforcing polices that both injure citizens and undermine freedom, the police have become part of the bureaucratic machine that neither respects citizen dignity nor freedom.”
In his view, the Patriot Act violated at least six constitutional amendments and chilled political protest and dissent. And he offers this pre-Snowden take on the NSA: “Indeed, the government is already preparing electronic dossiers on virtually every citizen. Take for example, the National Security Agency (NSA). ... (T)he NSA makes it possible for government to keep track of what Americans say and do, from the trivial to the damning, whether it is private or public.”
He also covers what one chapter calls “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” key aspects of Orwell's “1984” and other dystopian science fiction becoming reality, and what the publisher calls “timely and practical initiatives for Americans to take charge ... and stop the growing police state.”
For any reader concerned about erosion of the constitutional bedrock in which our freedoms are rooted, “A Government of Wolves” can point the way toward common ground on which all Americans can stand in their freedoms' defense.
