Professor Philip Heymann ’60 and his colleague from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Juliette Kayyem ’95 say Congress should provide much-needed legislation to deal with a number of issues that have emerged in the last three years in the fight against terrorism. With advice from American and British law enforcement officers, judges, lawyers and academics, Heymann and Kayyem are drafting a set of legislative proposals they plan to submit to Congress before year’s end. “We think that many of these issues can be resolved in a way that saves 90 percent of the civil liberties concerned and still gives 90 percent–sometimes even 100 percent–of the national security protection,” Heymann said. The recommendations “are an effort to get a great deal of both, rather than just one.” They will focus on the need for greater judicial oversight and more clearly specified rules and standards in 10 areas:
- The government’s use of vast computerized databases of private commercial activity
- The use of identity cards or biometric data to identify individuals
- Government surveillance of religious and political gatherings
- Law enforcement “profiling” of U.S. citizens and noncitizens based on race, ethnicity or nationality
- Detention of persons seized within designated “zones of active combat”
- Detention of persons seized within the United States
- Detention of persons seized outside the United States but not in designated “zones of active combat”
- Trials of detainees by military commissions both inside and outside designated “zones of active combat”
- Coercive interrogation techniques
- Targeted killings or assassinations, both inside and outside designated “zones of active combat”