It’s a happy new year, but not for the Constitution.

Dec. 31, 2011 might well be remembered as the day the terrorists won. It is the day that President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act at the White House. Osama must be having a good chuckle about how this country is tearing up the Bill of Rights to fight “terrorism.” Signing the NDAA allowed indefinite detention to be officially written into law. Part of the thinking behind the Patriot Act, NDAA gives away our rights to fight a “threat” that may or may not exist.

Terrorists win when they cause a country to eliminate rights in the name of security. Obama's signing of the NDAA is an example of that process.

The White House had originally threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA bill, but, as usual, changed its position and reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama did issue a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the signing statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations, nor does it stop the Obama administration from changing its mind again.

This new law is very dangerous, and hopefully will be found to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, because there are no temporal or geographic limitations in the law, and thus it can be used by this and any other future president to militarily detain people indefinitely, including American citizens captured far from any battlefield. And just a suspicion of being a terrorist would trigger the law. In the wrong hands, NDAA could lead to widespread abuse.

How many Guantanamos should we build?

The ACLU points out that, "Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.

“The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war."

I am extremely dismayed, but not surprised, that President Obama signed this bill. His administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court. Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back those claims has been dashed.

Thankfully this country has three branches of government, and the final word on the scope of detention authority belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the issue. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created, because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority. People in Syria live in that fear, not American citizens.

The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever it can, be it in court, in Congress or internationally.

For more information see www.aclu.org.

Campaign. Learn more at www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org and www.unplugsalem.org. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (609) 335-8176.