Drifting Toward 1984

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights ended its hearings into the extent of Government surveillance of citizens last week. The hearings produced no clear-cut plans for remedial legislation. They did, however, accomplish the aim of the subcommittee's chairman, North Carolina Senator Sam J. Ervin (TIME, March 8), by dramatizing the difficulty of preserving privacy in a world drifting toward 1984.

Ervin has been plumping for an inquiry into the impact of Government data banks on individual rights since 1967, when he learned that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was using stored information to blacklist scientists for their political views. Two years later, he heard about the Secret Service's data bank, which houses information on 50,000 persons, including some who are described vaguely as "professional gate crashers" and some who "insist upon personally contacting high Government officials for the purpose of redress of imaginary grievances." Ervin figured he just might fit into the latter category.

Blanket Surveillance. Last year John O'Brien, a former Army intelligence agent, disclosed that the Army had spied on a number of U.S. politicians, including Illinois State Treasurer Adlai Stevenson III, now a U.S. Senator. Ervin decided that the time had come for his subcommittee to act. In four weeks of hearings, he and his colleagues, including Liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy, Birch Bayh and John Tunney, heard 45 witnesses. Among them:

>Arthur R. Miller, a law professor at the University of Michigan, whose book Assault on Privacy was just published, testified that some 20 federal agencies operate computerized information files or are planning to do so. "It is simply unrealistic," declared Miller, "to assume that the managers . . . will take it upon themselves to protect the public against misuse of the data in their custody."

>Former Army Intelligence Agent Ralph M. Stein said that the Army had collected personal data on a wide number of notable Americans, including the late Martin Luther King, the late Whitney Young, Singers Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie, Georgia State Representative Julian Bond, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

>Former Sergeant Laurence F. Lane, emphasizing how military intelligence organizations competed with one another, recalled that an antiwar protest outside Fort Carson, Colo., in 1969 attracted agents from the 5th Infantry Division, the 113th Military Intelligence Group, the Air Force and the Navy.

>Robert F. Froehlke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Administration, disclosed that the Army had become seriously involved in surveillance of civilians after the Newark and Detroit riots in 1967. Following recommendations to Lyndon Johnson by Cyrus Vance, a former Deputy Defense Secretary, the Army formed a Civil Disturbance Committee to study the possible use of federal troops in major cities in the event of widespread insurrection. The intelligence operation grew quickly and haphazardly, investigating all sorts of persons--those who might contribute "directly or indirectly" to civil disturbances. After a public outcry, the Army's files on civilians were ordered destroyed last year, and the Government's intelligence headquarters was transferred to the Justice Department.

>Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist argued against legislation that might hinder the Government's ability to gather information about its citizens. It was "quite likely," he said, that "selfdiscipline on the part of the Executive Branch would provide an answer to virtually all legitimate complaints."

Machines Above Law. Last week Rehnquist returned to the hearings and asserted that the Government has the right to spy on any citizen--including Senator Ervin--as long as the citizen is not forced to disclose information and the information is not used against him in court. The Senators understood that the Government needs to use computers and data banks for administrative purposes, including crime control. But they were distressed that Rehnquist seemed to think such a system should be allowed to grow unchecked. "There is not a syllable in the Constitution," Ervin snapped, "that gives the Federal Government the right to spy on civilians."

Another Administration witness, HEW Secretary Elliot Richardson, seemed to agree. He declared that the U.S. must develop the means of "controlling the potential for harm" inherent in the Government's surveillance activities. As the hearings ended, several subcommittee members favored legislation that would set strict rules for the Government's powers of surveillance. Senator Bayh announced that he intends to submit a bill that would allow citizens access to all Government files concerning themselves and would enable them to refute untrue or derogatory charges and limit dissemination of what the files contain. "Unless we take command of the new technology," said Ervin, "we may well discover some day that the machines stand above the laws."

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