More Eyes On You

When Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed new antiterrorist legislation last week, he wanted Congress to approve it within days. At the White House, there was some annoyance that he set the deadline without consulting first. But maybe Ashcroft was right to think he had to act fast, and not only because he needs to crack terrorist networks before they can strike again. He also needs to head off resistance from people across the political spectrum who think the Justice Department already has all the power it needs. The things that Ashcroft wants--expanded power to tap phones, sift through e-mail and detain or deport foreigners--don't just offend the A.C.L.U. Cynicism about government power is now the folk culture of the American right. In Congress, one of the first members to question Ashcroft's plans was Georgia's state-of-the-art conservative Representative Bob Barr. "We cannot and must not," he said, "allow our constitutional freedoms to become victims of these violent attacks."

As a former Senator, Ashcroft is well aware that in 1995, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, bipartisan antiterrorism proposals much like the ones he just introduced were defeated in the House by Barr and Michigan's John Conyers Jr., the liberals' liberal. It was a strange-bedfellows alliance that has come back to life. This time, more than 150 organizations from left and right have organized an umbrella group, In Defense of Freedom, that may be the first umbrella that Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum has ever shared with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. As head of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist is ordinarily one of Washington's most high-profile conservative activists. But he hasn't forgotten that during the 1995 battle, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick suggested that the new powers could be used against militant tax evaders. "Prosecutors always want more power," says Norquist. "We need to slow this down."

One of the proposals defeated six years ago, "roving wiretaps," made a comeback on the Attorney General's wish list last week. Presently, when wiretap authority is granted by a judge, it applies only to a specified phone. In an era of "literally disposable phones," Ashcroft said, investigators need to be able to seek permission to monitor any landline phone, cell phone or pager that a suspect uses, or to go through e-mail from any computer he works on. But once the roving tap is okayed, no judge would further oversee how it was carried out, leaving the FBI to decide on its own how many devices to tap. What Ashcroft's critics predict is a world of "anticipatory monitoring" in which a multitude of innocent bystanders is caught up. It doesn't help that he also wants Congress to allow the FBI to use routinely its controversial Carnivore software, which can comb through millions of e-mails and Web searches, looking for suspicious online activity. "All these provisions together will amount to a breathtaking expansion of federal power," says Nadine Strossen, president of the A.C.L.U.