FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK

There's no question that terrorism still poses a danger to our way of
life. And drug abuse is another deadly threat.

Yet increasingly intrusive policies aimed at these problems whittle
away the precious freedoms bequeathed by our Founding Fathers. It
troubles us that the government seems to have embarked on a headlong
rush toward Big Brotherism in the name of national security and/or
winning the war on drugs.

In recent days, the federal government said it plans to overhaul its
employee drug-screening program by switching to tests that analyze
workers' hair, sweat and saliva.

That revelation came close on the heels of the Transportation Security
Administration's plans for a new computerized system to check the
backgrounds of all passengers boarding commercial flights in the
United States. Passengers will be ranked and color-coded according to
the threat they may pose.

A "red" rating, for example, will bar the passenger from boarding;
"yellow" will mean additional scrutiny; and "green" will mark the
passenger for routine screening.

The TSA also envisions a "registered traveler" program to allow
frequent airline passengers to clear security more rapidly.

Airlines have resisted turning over passenger reservation lists to the
TSA because they fear negative publicity - with good reason, we'd say.
Civil libertarians bristle at the proposal to create Computer Assisted
Passenger Prescreening Program 2 and say the "registered traveler"
program would be discriminatory.

In another area, the plan to improve drug testing would add yet
another level of intrusion into people's privacy and create a growth
industry in the process as the private sector follows the government's
lead. There are doubts about the new tests, which can detect drugs in
a person's system after a much longer period than urinalysis. Critics
say the tests can yield false positives for people such as narcotics
cops, who merely may have been near a controlled substance.

We worry that these steps may create a whole that is more dangerous
than the sum of its parts. Americans, who traditionally have shunned
the mechanisms of totalitarian regimes, may wake up one day to find
that almost everybody's "dossier" is on file.

Bluntly put, there's no guarantee that the government won't misuse the
information.

Instead of spending huge sums casting wide nets with feel-good
measures, the government instead should focus its finite resources
toward upgrading overseas intelligence to thwart terrorists before
they reach our shores. Instead of fancier drug tests, maybe Uncle Sam
should spend more time and money researching what makes people use
illegal drugs and find ways to help them shake this scourge.

We shouldn't destroy the very freedoms that our avowed enemies so
despise.