Do you know what’s a fun search string for the
Reason archive? “Patriot” and
“215.“ With those terms, which reference the USA PATRIOT Act and
its controversial
Section 215 (and form the legal justifications for much of the
domestic surveillance revelations that have shook the country this
spring and summer), you can find all kinds of citations from
conservatives ridiculing unserious civil libertarians for worrying
about the federal government having the ability to snoop on
Americans’ innocuous activities without probable cause.

So, for instance, this September
2003 article by Julian Sanchez (who has since gone on to do

valuable work on the subject of government snooping), links to
a sneering Washington Times editorial from almost exactly
10 years ago titled “Hype,
hysteria and the Patriot Act.” Excerpt:

One of the most unfairly maligned provisions of the 2001 Patriot
Act is section 215, which permits the FBI to apply for a court
order requiring production of library and business records in the
course of a terrorism investigation. According to Stanford Law
School Dean Kathleen Sullivan, the provision is downright
“threatening.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asserts
that, under section 215, “the FBI could spy on a person because
they don’t like the books she reads, or because they don’t like the
Web sites she visits.”

The above is nothing more than hyperbole that bears little
relation to the facts. […]

Moreover, this section of the act actually imposes more
restrictions on its uses than a federal grand jury subpoena for the
same records. […]

It would be a serious mistake to cripple the Patriot Act based
on misinformation about the law and misunderstandings about the
real-world challenges the law-enforcement community faces in
preventing future September 11ths.

Huh. So what does the Washington Times editorial board

say now about Section 215?

The National Security Agency has been
lying to Congress and the public. For years, employees at
the spy agency have sworn they absolutely, positively
never engage in domestic snooping. Thanks to the revelations of
fugitive former spook Edward J. Snowden, we know these
assurances were lies. Nothing the secretive agency says
can be trusted. […]

An amendment introduced by Rep. Justin Amash, Michigan
Republican, would have cut off all funding for the dragnet
collection of personal phone calls, GPS location history and
related “metadata” from Americans not suspected of any misdeeds.
The measure would have erased the overly broad interpretation of
Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which has enabled the domestic
electronic dragnet. Snooping on foreign nationals, which the spy
agency claims is the sole purpose of the program, would not have
been affected.

Reluctant House leaders consented to schedule a vote on Mr.
Amash’s amendment only after setting up a “cover” amendment that
allowed members to vote in favor of what appeared to be a
protection from spy agency abuse but does nothing to stop abuse of
Section 215. […]

The surveillance state prefers to work in the dark, not because
it’s afraid terrorists will learn the United States is listening —
al Qaeda is already aware of that — but because it fears an
outraged public will take away its playthings, the tools of the
trade that entrusts secretive agencies with power no government in
history has ever before had.

A strange coalition of spooks, veterans of the George W. Bush
White House, Republican and Democratic committee chairmen and the
Obama administration emerged from the shadows to prevent the
defunding of the domestic spying. Nothing creates “bipartisanship”
quite like undermining the Constitution.

You could run similar archival fact-checking exercises for
Ramesh
Ponnuru, Heather
Mac Donald, John
Ashcroft, and plenty of others, only some of whom will have
dropped the “baseless hysteria” charge that Ashcroft and other
surveillance-state enthusiasts made popular a decade ago.

I don’t mean to single out the Washington Times here,
especially since the paper has come around. Instead, I mean to
point out the habit of mind so common then, and likely to
be common the next time Republicans run Washington. When Americans
have their sense of fear heightened, they over-trust their
government. When conservatives approach policy issues of life and
death, too many of them suspend the skepticism of government power
they otherwise apply to the provision of health care or the
collection of taxes. When partisans have power, they work hard to
marginalize libertarians. And when government has the ability to,
it lies its face off.

These rules are eternal, and require constant
pushback.