Legislators also are pursuing a nationwide service of search warrants for electronic communications in the U.S. territories and provisions for surveillance outside domestic borders.
But political and educational leaders fear the legislation will target Arab- and Muslim-Americans and infringe upon civil liberties that Americans have enjoyed since the Bill of Rights. They question Americans' possible sacrifice of civil liberties for security.
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union were taken aback by the anti-terrorism legislation proposed.
According to a press release, the ACLU said the congressional anti-terrorist bill "poses significantly more danger to civil liberties."
Laura Murphey, director of the ACLU's Washington National Office, stated in the press release, "The long-term impact on basic freedoms in this legislation cannot be justified."
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., was concerned with the potential severity of the legislation. Bridgett Lowell, press secretary for Price, said he will look at all the legislation carefully.
"Some of the things that are being proposed by the Bush administration is being seen as unconstitutional," Lowell said. "Calling people a security risk because of ethnicity is wrong."
Many of America's educational leaders also agree with Price and the ACLU.
Richard Rosen, associate dean of the UNC School of Law, said the bill might agitate a racial divide that has plagued America since the country's founding.
"There has been a strain of racism in America that hasn't gone away," Rosen said. "Even though the (Bush) administration is stressing that we should not stereotype anybody, indefinite detention, increased electronic surveillance and computer surveillance will increase the harm of that strain."
David Martin, a law professor at the University of Virginia, agreed that the congressional anti-terrorist legislation presents a problem to the American people.
"It seems to me that there is some room for moderation in the legislation," Martin said. "We need to look mainly at immigrant provisions in the bill and the expansion on the definition of terrorism."
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Martin also recognized the difficulty in balancing security and civil liberty. "It is the age-old question of how much do we trade off some of our liberties to have security," he said. "I expect some tightening up of provisions."
Angelo Ancheta, director of legal and advocacy programs with the civil rights program at Harvard University, said he was concerned that the bill will pose a threat to Muslims and Arab-Americans in the form of racial profiling.
"Up until September 11, we were seeing that racial profiling was not a good thing, for instance driving while black or driving while brown," Ancheta said.
"Now we're seeing that law enforcement is looking less at traditional American minority groups -- now it is driving while Arab or flying while Arab."
Ancheta went on to say that in the quest for more security, American people will have to adjust to the new legislation.
"As we get further and further away from the September 11 attacks, we will experience less sense of security and more of a sense of returning to normal.
"We can't go back to the way things were, but the American people can continue to be strong. Law enforcement will get more power and terrorism will decrease."
But for some Americans who have lived in countries with high terrorist activity, subsequent governmental security policies altered the lives of everyone.
Andrei Marmor, a visiting law professor at UVa. from Tel Aviv University, said terrorist incidents are so numerous in Israel that it is hard to distinguish them.
Marmor said that after such incidents, the Israeli government typically tightens security. "We had plenty of routine sets of security measures which are not familiar here," he said.
"They would check bags when you entered the cinema or the mall, things like that," he added. "I don't think that has ever happened on a routine basis over here, but we got used to it."
Already, in the U.S., security in many public places has been tightened. At major airports nationwide, members of the U.S. National Guard have been stationed.
But legislators are still in a quandary over how best to ensure security without infringing upon civil liberties, the founding political principles of a democracy.
Lowell said Price is doing all he can to be open-minded about anti-terrorist legislation, but he still has concerns about the future of American civil liberties.
"You want to be safe, but at the same time, you don't want to feel like we are in the same political state as terrorist countries," she said.
"We don't want to get to the point where we are like the terrorists that attacked," Lowell added. "If you forsake the liberties of democracy this country advocates, you'll let terrorism win."
The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.
