On Dec. 20, 2006, President Bush signed a statement attached to a postal reform bill that gave him the authority to open U.S. mail without a judicial warrant.
The statement expands on a section of the law that allows the opening of sealed mail to protect life, guard against
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Over the past six years, the Bush administration, using the events of Sept. 11, 2001, as a pretext, has waged an all-out assault on civil liberties. The Patriot Act, a broad reduction of civil liberties, was just the beginning. Bush has also signed a secret presidential order allowing the National Security Agency to track phone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without a court order.
The government has pressured phone companies for greater access to their records. Currently, the U.S. Justice Department is trying to pressure internet companies to keep records of every internet site a person visits.
In the last six years, the U.S. capitalist state has given itself much broader legal powers to arrest and detain people for months without any charges. The intelligence apparatus of the state has been overhauled in order to more efficiently repress dissent and opposition. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the new post of director of national intelligence, who overseas and coordinates all U.S. intelligence agencies, are part of this restructuring.
Thousands of people have been harassed and arrested by the Bush administration. In many cases, the targets have been immigrants, Arabs and Muslims.
These legal and extra-legal changes have greatly eroded rights won in struggle in the 1970s.
In the 1970s, a congressional committee investigating abuses found that for three decades the CIA and FBI had illegally opened hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail. Those targeted included many anti-Vietnam War and civil rights activists.
The secret FBI program, dubbed COINTELPRO, sought to destroy anti-war groups, liberation movements and “subversive” individuals through surveillance and infiltration.
After COINTELPRO was exposed by progressive activists, Congress was forced to place limits on the government’s power to open private mail. President Bush is dismantling those limits during a new period of unrest caused by resistance to the imperialist Iraq war.
The Bush administration and the ruling class fears that opposition to the war will grow. They hope that falsely naming the current war a “war on terrorism” and increasing their legal powers over people’s liberties and rights will give them the weapons to dampen and suppress opposition.
Their hope is a false one. As long as the criminal war against Iraq continues, opposition is sure to grow.
