Look The Other Way

    

NEW YORK, June 7 (Reuters) - In today's America, prisoners are held incommunicado for years, newspapers can't photograph soldiers' coffins returned from Iraq and the government can secretly track the books citizens read and the movies they watch.

But civil liberties can erode much further before Americans will say enough is enough, say experts in social history and political behavior.

Fear struck by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks helped launch the curtailment of civil liberties in the name of national security, and that fear keeps Americans willing to trade away rights for safety, they say.

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Historians cite the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, when a threat of war with France led to the law making it illegal to speak critically of the United States. Editors were arrested, and newspapers closed down.

In the U.S. Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus writs, which protect against unlawful imprisonment.

During World War One, fear of rising communism led to anti-immigrant sentiment, deportations and a violent crackdown on the labor movement. The 1917 Espionage Act prohibited anti-war activity and under the 1918 Sedition Act no one could "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the government.

Cold War fears of communist infiltration helped fuel the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee and a "Red Scare" led to discrimination and detention. Under the Smith Act, one could not advocate overthrow of the U.S. government.

But, said Isaac Kramnick, professor of government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, "all of those moments of fear pale in significance to 9/11 in reality and also in the way it's being exploited and manipulated by the Bush regime."

"Holding prisoners without charge and things of that sort are being justified in terms of the old argument of national security," he said.

But civil liberty issues such as prisoners rights do not trouble the average American, experts say. People look the other way when their own personal life is not at stake.

Polls proposing telephone taps and e-mail monitoring evoke far more resistance from Americans, Bowman said.

For Americans to speak out about their civil liberties, she said, "They would have to see some widespread, wide-scale abuses in what they think are private and personal areas. Then again, they're not particularly attentive."

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