Lawline.com

Here in New York City, the evidence that the 10^thanniversary of 9/11 is approaching is subtle but undeniable: the increased police presence in major subway stations and the full page spreads on the front pages of free newspapers handed out on the street give it away. But how have things changed in the last 10 years? Some things, like air travel and the Ney York Skyline, will never be the same, but interestingly,according to Adam  Liptak of the New York Times, Civil Rights have remained largely intact; despite what might be expected in response to such a crisis, this area of law has  remained largely unchanged.

Liptak argues that the legal response to 9/11 did not dramatically curtail civil rights in the name of security; in fact, the law itself changed little, the only thing that really changed was the enforcement of the law. According to law professor Kent Roach, even the Patriot Act, which has become a sort of shorthand in some circles for the abuse of government power under the cover of 9/11, was  pretty “mundane and mild”, and did not make preventive detention or limitations on speech commonplace. All in all, even though the new law enforcement paradigm focused on preventing terrorist attacks (which meant arresting people considered dangerous before they committed a crime by increased surveillance of religious and dissident groups and inserting informants into Muslim communities which might have impinged on First Amendment rights in some cases), the contraction of domestic liberties since 9/11 has been minor.

The major difference, according to law professor Robert M. Chesney, is that laws that already existed are being used in these preventive strategies. For example, when persons of interest are arrested before they have committed any serious crime, they are charged with something broad that requires little substantiation (like “conspiracy” or “material support” of terrorist groups).  Another tactic often used involved detaining those suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations for immigration offenses.

One area of the law where big changes have occurred is in the legality of surveillance, the Justice Department was granted the broad ability to use wiretapping, which unleashed a large amount of surveillance with little judicial review.

While there have definitely been instances where civil rights have been curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism, the fact that these instances are known to the public is itself evidence that 1^stAmendment rights, like free speech and free press, are still very much in tact in America; much more so than they have been during any other war or crisis in our nation’s history.