The ACLU just released a scary paper titled “THE 2007 STATE OF CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA.”

From sneak and peek searches that are a-okayed by the PATRIOT Act to the President’s sole authority to determine what constitutes torture and who should be held indefinitely without being charged to seeking private financial records without warrants, it seems awfully 1933 in 2007.

The ACLU says:

America is in a state of constitutional crisis engendered by the president’s unprecedented expansion of executive power. The crisis is exacerbated by the 109th Congress’s failure to carry out its constitutionally mandated role to act as a check on the executive.

To restore traditional American values guaranteed by our founding fathers, we call on the president to sign an amended Military Commissions Act that restores habeas corpus, stop warrantless NSA wiretapping, protect our privacy, end torture and abuse, and stop hiding behind false claims of state secrecy. The president’s recent announcement to follow the law and get a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before actually conducting a wire tap, it is only a small step toward restoration of civil liberties.

More ACLU findings below.

Military Commissions Act of 2006 – This act eliminated a cornerstone of our Constitution and made the president both judge and jury.

• Habeas corpus is the essential right to challenge your detention before a court using due process of the law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 took that away from certain people.
• The Military Commissions Act gives this president and future presidents the sole power to determine both who should be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime and what constitutes torture.
• Some of the people whom the president has declared enemy combatants are in their fifth year of captivity without ever having been charged with a crime.

NSA Warrantless wiretapping - Whatever inherent powers the president might have under Article II of the Constitution, they do not include the power to conduct a warrantless, indefinite and unlimited domestic surveillance campaign that is expressly prohibited by law.

• The National Security Agency continues its illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans – tapping phones and reading our e-mail.
• Although the president now says he will not renew the warrantless surveillance program, he still claims he has the authority to violate the law when he sees fit and can return to warrantless surveillance any moment.
• The public outcry lead by the ACLU is the main reason the administration has conceded there must be some judicial oversight of the NSA’s surveillance of our calls and e-mails.

Privacy - Expanded government powers and expanded private sector data collection efforts is creating a new “surveillance society” that is unlike anything Americans have ever seen.

• The Patriot Act continues to be used to assault our privacy. The Patriot Act’s national security letters, 215 orders and sneak and peek warrants continue to expose our health care, financial and other private records to unwarranted scrutiny.
• The FBI and Pentagon are keeping files about peace activists, and placing confidential informants inside groups like Greenpeace and PETA.
• Recent reports tell us the administration is opening our mail and seeking financial records without warrants.

Torture and abuse - The government continues to claim that it has the power to designate anyone as enemy combatants and to detain them indefinitely without charge.

• Five years later, hundreds of prisoners remain at Guantanamo. The government even admits 140 are innocent. None of them able to learn why they were captured tortured and detained indefinitely.
• Investigations into detention centers have revealed severe human rights abuses and violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
• People captured by agents using faulty intelligence or by mistaken identity are telling first-hand accounts of abuse in secret U.S. prisons around the world.

Excessive government secrecy - The Bush administration avoids any scrutiny of its illegal behavior by hiding behind a veil of secrecy. He has used a variety of tactics to deny court review of key facts that could reveal unconstitutional and illegal actions by administration officials.

• The Freedom of Information Act has been weakened through willful noncompliance
• The administration has led a campaign of reclassification and increased secrecy -- including the expansion of a catch-all category of “sensitive but unclassified” -- and has made sweeping claims of “state secrets” to stymie judicial review of its policies that erode civil liberties.
• To thwart the media’s role in exposing questionable and illegal conduct, the administration wants to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917.