The Washington Post deserves a lot of credit for publishing this piece on its editorial page today. An anonymous businessman explains his predicament after having been served with an FBI “national security letter”:

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand — a context that the FBI still won’t let me discuss publicly — I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

…

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

(For background on national security letters, go here).

This businessman has given us a sneak preview of life in the surveillance state. I’ve tried to draw attention to the conscription aspect of anti-terrorism laws and policies, but conservatives don’t want to talk about it. The ACLU has gotten involved in the gag order/​free speech aspect, but the conscription gets tossed aside in a cacophony.

President Bush insists that he is “defending freedom.” John Yoo and Eric Posner advance the view that the sphere of liberty has been expanding over the years. Other conservatives see the impact on liberty but strangely taunt: “The government has already been doing that! If Bush wants to take it further, what’s the big deal? This is no time to rethink legal precedent.”

Robert Higgs, among many others, has showed that liberty has been losing ground to government over the years. Since 9/11, we have been in a vicious political cycle. The courts are defending constitutional liberties at the margins, but the overall trend is quite bad. A few months ago, some U.S. senators voted to enact a law that they believed to be unconstitutional. That’s an indication of the political climate. Bad.