March 7, 1974
Page 5829
ACTION FOR PRIVACY, SENATOR HART'S RESPONSE TO THE PRESIDENT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, last Saturday, our colleague and good friend, the senior Senator from Michigan (Mr. HART) made a national radio broadcast giving the response of the congressional majority to the President's message on privacy legislation. Senator HART not only exposed the inadequacy of the administration's proposals; he also set out a detailed program of effective action to end government spying on citizens and to control access to criminal records in government files. As he pointed out, the President can prove the sincerity of his concern for privacy by taking five different but related executive actions, without waiting for legislative definition. Speaking for the Congress, he promised to work with the President to turn administration rhetoric into reality and said:
We look forward to a time when the tragedy of Watergate, and all it has come to represent, will also mark a decisive turning point in the preservation of our civil liberties.
Mr. President, Senator HART's speech forthrightly defines our concerns over official invasions of privacy. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in full in the RECORD for the benefit of all who seek to understand the realities of this vital issue.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT NIXON'S MESSAGE ON PRIVACY
In his State of the Union Address, President Nixon promised to "make an historic beginning on the task of defending and protecting the right of personal privacy for every American."
That promise, subsequently outlined in the President's February 23rd radio address, turned out to be principally the naming of a new committee rather than a broad program of action.
The President's only specific proposal dealt with one small part of the problem – the serious threat to personal privacy created by widespread use of data banks or computers. And even that was a halfway measure.
Despite all the disturbing revelations of Watergate, the President made no promise to instruct his administration to live up to the guarantees of personal privacy contained in the Constitution, nor did he give his support to several bills dealing with this which are already before Congress.
The fact is that Mr. Nixon is almost 200 years late in proclaiming a historic beginning in protecting personal privacy for every American. That foundation was laid in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers, having led a revolution against the dictates of a king, knew that the cornerstone of liberty was strict prohibitions against government intrusion in the personal lives of its citizens.
The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to speak or remain silent about their political beliefs, whether or not those beliefs agree or disagree with the government.
That means the federal government has no right to spy on political opponents, but the Nixon administration did just that.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of people to be secure from unauthorized searches of their person, their house and their papers, but some either involved with President Nixon's election campaign or associated with his White House staff broke into at least two buildings seeking information.
When government officials use Army personnel to spy on peaceful political meetings, as the present Administration did, your privacy is threatened. When government officials send burglars to break into the offices of doctors for confidential files as this administration did with its Plumbers squad, your privacy is threatened.
When government officials use the confidential files of the Internal Revenue Service to harass persons on a White House enemies list, as this administration did, your privacy is threatened.
When government officials eavesdrop on private conversations of political opponents, as this administration did, your privacy is threatened.
Many of these actions by our government have been defended on grounds of "national security," but we have come to understand that there is a wide range of constitutional abuses a determined political operative can seek to have excused under that mantle. And, indeed, the American people realize that.
A recent poll, for example, showed that 75 percent of those interviewed considered "wiretapping and spying under the excuse of 'national security' as a serious threat to people's privacy."
As the public learned about government spying and wiretapping, it became fearful. Many have come to believe that their phones are tapped, their homes or offices bugged, their mail opened, and their tax returns made available to officials who seek to punish them for political dissent.
This concern was underscored for me by a constituent who wrote not long ago. He (or possibly she) said he could not sign his name in a letter to his Senator anymore. He feared his letter might be intercepted and his name might go on a White House "enemies list".
While these fears may be exaggerated, they no longer can be dismissed as groundless paranoia. And they demonstrate the very real chilling affect on the exercise of First Amendment rights which the actions of the Administration have had.
No one denies that modern government needs certain kinds of information about its citizens to administer programs fairly and effectively. We must balance the right to be left alone against the needs of society. But we must always be guided by the need to keep government's ability to use information about private lives to the absolute minimum.
In his discussion of data banks, President Nixon did point to some very real threats to personal privacy. Federal agencies alone have files on every aspect of many of our lives – medical records, army records, school records, business records, to name a few. Consolidation of data could provide a tremendous amount of information for an unscrupulous official to use against us because of our views, our friends, or the way we live.
The pace of modern technology and data collection is a stiff challenge to maintaining privacy. However, and perhaps understandably in light of Watergate, the President chose to paint the primary threat as one of technology.
We have learned to our regret that, with or without sophisticated technology, unprincipled men can find ways to invade our privacy. A crow bar, after all, is a rather simple machine used to jimmy a door.
So if the President is serious about joining Congress in efforts to control government invasion of privacy, let me suggest a program of action he can take now.
Perhaps the most pressing need is to put an end to domestic political surveillance and intelligence gathering by government agencies. The President could begin that effort by supporting a Senate bill to prohibit military personnel from spying on American citizens.
The President should order everyone in his Administration to refrain from political spying of any kind. There is absolutely no justification, legal or otherwise, for government to collect intelligence on its political opponents for the purpose of or with the effect of stifling their opposition.
The President should immediately order that no wiretapping, bugging or breaking and entering, be carried out without authority of an independent court order.
He should state without equivocation that the label of "national security" will not be used again to hide or excuse illegal acts. And then he should join Congress in preparing legislation to make those executive orders into law.
The President should respond to continuing reports that telephone records, bank records and other private business records are being obtained by the government secretely with no legal safeguards – without the protection of a court warrant, or the opportunity for the person involved to raise legal objections to protect his rights. The President, by executive order, could and should end that practice and require any federal agency to obtain a subpoena for such information.
For several years, the Administration has opposed a Senate-passed bill to prohibit government employees from being asked about their religious beliefs, their politics and their social lives. The President should support this measure. Such a law would set an example for employers in the private sector to follow and free our civil servants from implied threats when that kind of information is sought.
And finally, the Administration should support stiffer controls on dissemination and use of criminal justice records than those contained in its current proposal.
These records include arrests as well as convictions. They are sold or given to credit bureaus, banks, insurance companies, employers, and schools. Too many people have been denied advanced schooling, a loan or a job because of inaccurate records or because an arrest record fails to include the fact that charges were later dropped or the person was acquitted.
And too many people never find out that such records exist and cause their difficulties.
The answer is a law to prevent private access to all arrest records and require officials to open these records to inspection and correction by those involved. And any criminal justice agency participating in the nationwide criminal information network should be required to update their records.
I have outlined a program of action I would hope the President would adopt. In doing so, he would turn his back on what I believe to be unprecedented efforts in this Administration to undermine the right to privacy and he would live up to the rhetoric of his message on that right.
We in Congress are fully prepared to work with him toward that end. We look forward to a time when the tragedy of Watergate, and all it has come to represent, will also mark a decisive turning point in the preservation of our civil liberties.
As it is with many rights necessary to keep a country free, we do not always understand the importance of the guarantee to privacy until it has been threatened.
But defend it we must or else cease to be a land which would be free.
Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote that our Founding Fathers:
"Sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be left alone – the most comprehensive right and the right most valued by civilized man."
We must not surrender that most valued right.
Thank you.