A Stitch in Haste

Imagine if the federal government passed a new law that not only carved out (yet another) exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement of either a warrant or probable cause to enter a home, but also required every homeowner to provide, at their own expense, one of those battering rams that police use to break down doors.

Well, something similar is happening at America's colleges:

The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.

The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't it true that few if any recent terrorists, whether Islamofascists or neo-Nazis or whatever, have attended U.S. colleges or utilized their technological infrastructure? Heck, it seems to me that the best thing we could do would be to get more potential terrorists into our mainstream educational system — maybe it would prevent them from becoming terrorists in the first place.

Keep in mind that the colleges are not actually challenging the requirement on privacy grounds per se, but on the unreasonable timing and expense. According to one spokesman for the colleges, the requirement would amount to a $450 annual tuition increase for every college student in America.

With no guarantee, indeed no reasonable expectation, that a single terrorist would be caught or a single terrorist plot thwarted.

Everyone wants to stop the terrorists. But there simply must be limits. Limits to the price we pay, both in terms of dollars and in terms of erosion of our privacy rights.

And if we're not at those limits yet, then we're coming pretty damn close.