That Troublesome First Amendment & Wikileaks

   

After the tragedy of 9/11 many Americans, including those in the  Whitehouse and Congress, were extremely frightened and hastily rushed to pass the so-called "Patriot Act" demonstrating once again that fear induces people to irrational actions contrary to their long-held principles. Unfortunately, something very similar may be occurring these days following the release of "secret" documents by Wikileaks. Some senators and others are trying to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917 in order to prosecute those involved even though court decisions since 1917 have found the act to violate basic constitutional rights.


Perhaps many have forgotten the abuses that occurred as a result of this act. President Wilson was successful in having the act passed in an effort to silence  his critics in a run-up to World War One. Thousands of ordinary citizens who were speaking out against the US involvement in the war were arrested. A movie director was sentenced to ten years because he showed a film which revealed British cruelty in the Revolutionary War -- the reason England was now our ally.


The poet E.E. Cummins was imprisoned beacuse he said he did not hate German. In 1918 presidential candidate Eugene Debbs received a 10 year prison sentence for reading the First Amendment in public  Judge Learned Hand maintained that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself.  In the 1990s, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan deplored the "culture of secrecy" made possible by the Act, noting the tendency of bureaucracies to enlarge their powers by increasing the scope of what is held "secret" (cf.Wikipedia).


Unfortunately today the psychology of fear is encouraging some to seek an easy fix by resurrecting the Espionage Act of 1917. Since we seem so eager to sacrifice the freedoms for which our forefathers gave their lives, it is appropriate to recall Ben Franklin's wisdom: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."


As for the Wikileaks problem, the first question is whether most of these items should have been  classified  as"secret." Why  is our government concealing information pertaining to  large banks, huge corporations, and the Vatican? It maybe that these are stories the mainstream press should have been investigating all along.
The second and more serious concern is whether these leaks endangered some one's life or exposed one of our operatives as in the case of Valerie Plame. If that is the case there is a law to deal with that. Recall Scooter Libby was sent to prison until his bosses at the Whitehouse convinced George Bush to pardon him. As for serious threats to national security, there are laws that deal with that, We do not need to invoke the vague, possibly unconstitutional Espionage Act 0f 1917; it is an open invitation to human rights abuse.