Last week, while you were watching martial law undertake the Boston area in the furious search for the Boston Marathon suspect, the U.S. House of Representatives quietly pushed through their latest scaling back of your freedom.

Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act, or CISPA, allows sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google, along with your mobile service provider, to share their vast stockpiles of personal data with government agencies — no warrant necessary.

Many congressmen really stepped up their game when it came to employing scare tactics to get CISPA passed in the name of “cybersecurity”.

Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said, “In the case of Boston, they were real bombs. In this case, they’re digital bombs. These bombs are on their way.”

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) claimed CISPA needed to be passed to stop North Korean hackers from taking down American infrastructure, presumably from their Commodore 64s.

But the award for most ridiculous claim of the day went to our own Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.), who made claims in support for CISPA that were so blatantly unfounded, it was almost comical. He said WikiLeaks, a website that posts leaked information, is “pursuing very aggressive measures” to hack into power grids and air traffic control systems.

The bill passed the House and now moves on to a vote in the Senate.

If signed into law, it will be the latest hit on the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …”

While Congress was subtly soiling this amendment, law enforcement in Watertown, Mass., were throwing it right out the window as militarized personnel in full combat gear raided houses and forced innocent residents out of their homes at gunpoint.

And as the presence of a lone gunman justified this utter disregard of American civil liberties, the familiar voices in Congress and mainstream media cried out that the United States is a battlefield.

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal called out Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for disagreeing with such claims. The Wall Street Journal’s article said, “The anti-terror types on the left and GOP senators who agree the U.S. isn’t part of the battlefield are making the U.S. more vulnerable.”

When war hawks in Congress like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and media outlets like The Wall Street Journal advocate such notions, what they mean is no more due process.

What they mean is that the negation of our civil liberties — in the name of “safety” –— knows no bounds.

They mean that in our impossible war on terror, in which we have declared a war on an idea we will never be close to defeating, the laws of war apply right here at home.

Terrorism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.”

In the war on terror, the only party achieving a “political objective” is the United States, which, under a “general climate of fear,” strips the rights of its citizens and expands its reach in foreign lands, supposedly for our own good.

The political objective of destroying our freedom, liberty and way of life can’t be achieved by a cyberattack, a bombing at a sporting event or even another Sept. 11.

We are the ones accomplishing this, as we allow our values and way of life to be torn down from the inside by the very people we elected to protect them.

And as Benjamin Franklin warned more than 250 years ago, while we continue to give up our liberties for safety, we will ultimately have neither.

Nick Smith is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can been reached at nxsmith@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @Nick_X_Smith.

Published on April 24, 2013 at 2:02 am