Civil Liberties

"The first casualty when war comes is truth," Sen. Hiram Johnson of California said in 1917. Are civil liberties the second? Some civil rights groups and American historians say the answer is yes. Although the Persian Gulf War is only 4 weeks old, it already has spawned some restrictions and policies that make libertarians leery--and fearful that democratic ideals are being undermined as the nation rallies to battle.

Civil libertarians are girding for a backlash that could limit individual freedoms as a result of this week's terrorist attacks. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has started a telephone hotline to monitor incursions into civil liberties, particularly racial profiling. "At this time of crisis, we want to make sure that civil liberties aren't violated," said Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU's Northern California chapter.

For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism. Someday, it might actually meet. Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept.

Using tips from volunteers armed with binoculars and camcorders, Los Angeles police in the San Fernando Valley are sending warning letters to car owners whose vehicles have been seen in areas where drugs have been sold. Officers in three of the Valley's five divisions have initiated similar programs but none on the scale of the Devonshire Division, where on a recent night about 20 volunteers scouted for drug deals from apartments and rooftops at Nordhoff Street and Langdon Avenue in North Hills.

A 2-year-old city ordinance barring people with certain drug convictions from using public parks is unconstitutional, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California contends in a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday. At a news conference across the street from La Palma Park, ACLU officials said they are seeking to overturn the rarely enforced ordinance.

Activists gathered in Redondo Beach on Saturday for an Amnesty International conference concluded that they don't have to venture overseas to find human rights abuses. Instead, they said, there are plenty here at home. The group's annual western regional conference, which began Friday and ends today at the Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach hotel, discussed different faces of discrimination around the globe -- everything from violence against women and gays to the ravages of AIDS in Africa to U.S.

After thousands of protesters took to the streets Saturday in defiance of a state of emergency he had imposed the day before, President Lucio Gutierrez yielded to the demonstrators and lifted the decree. Gutierrez suspended civil liberties in this capital city late Friday after three nights of protests against his rule. On Saturday, the order was largely ignored.

Academy Award-winning director MILOS FORMAN was given the American Civil Liberty Union's Torch of Liberty award at a dinner last week in Los Angeles. The Czech-born director, who won Oscars for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in 1975 and "Amadeus" in 1984, was cited for his body of work and especially for the film "The People vs. Larry Flynt," which dramatized the 1988 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on free speech.

American civil liberties are as fixed and steady an influence in national life as the stock market--and every bit as elastic. Like the market, the rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens have grown to an extent that the Founding Fathers probably never imagined. But in times of danger, civil liberties have shrunk, suffering what market analysts might call a correction. Since Sept.

When the remains of some soldiers killed in the Persian Gulf War were returned to the military's pathology labs in Delaware last year, dental records and fingerprints proved useless in establishing their identities. The men had died so violently in an explosion inside their tank that it was impossible, using conventional scientific techniques, to determine which families should be notified.