ACLU of Illinois Responds on 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Attack on U.S.

CHICAGO – This morning, the United States is marking the 25th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda led attacks on the United States, attacks that struck New York City, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania. The attacks ushered in a host of measures – often in rapid fashion – that curtailed or threatened basic civil liberties, in hope of guarding against another attack. After a quarter century, many of these measures remain in place.

The following can be attributed to Colleen K. Connell, executive director at the ACLU of Illinois:

As Americans, we commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and mourn the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent people on that day. It also is a moment to recommit to our fundamental values and avoid unconstitutional measures like the use of torture, racial profiling and detention without charges that stained the post-9/11 landscape.

We also should give careful examination of the ways in which the events of 9/11 have been utilized to construct a massive surveillance state across our country. Chicago, for example, has become the most surveilled city in the United States, with an estimated 80,000 cameras – public and private – interconnected into a single system. Automatic license plate readers have become ubiquitous in communities large and small – with repeated and regular reports of abuse by law enforcement. And we see a hostile federal government misusing databases created for national security to harass and detain immigrants and asylum seekers across the country.

After a quarter century, there is little evidence that this pervasive surveillance has kept us safer as a country; but it is now clear that the collection of this much data in the hands of a few can be weaponized against those who are outside the political mainstream. This anniversary should be an opportunity to revisit the necessity of many post-9/11 policies and demand more accountability for the abuse of data collection by government.