In the fog of war, the government drops its boot heel on the throat of Americans' civil liberties. The war on the coronavirus is no exception.

The problem is emergency powers have a way of outliving their emergencies.

Some limits on people's freedoms may prove to be necessary to stanch the spread of the pandemic, but we need to remain vigilant against so-called "emergency" measures becoming institutionalized.

We're still not having the national conversation about the limits that must be placed on the government's ability to know all and see all. Someone has to watch the watchers.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

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When President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act less than two months after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, it was wildly popular with the American public.

The Patriot Act massively expanded the government's ability to spy on its own citizens. And as the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it, the new law "eliminate[d] checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused."

Nearly two decades later, the "emergency" posed by an al-Qaeda terror attack has long since subsided, and the Patriot Act is more likely to be used to spy on drug dealers than would-be terrorists. And yet, every time the Patriot Act comes before Congress for a reauthorization, it's practically rubber-stamped back into effect.

That's because in the fog of war, the government drops its boot heel on the throat of Americans' civil liberties.

The war on the coronavirus is no exception.

The problem is emergency powers have a way of outliving their emergencies.

And while some limits on people's freedom of movement may prove to be necessary to stanch the spread of the pandemic, we need to remain vigilant against so-called "emergency" measures becoming institutionalized.

Tyrannies for the public good

When Rhode Island's Governor Gina Raimondo ordered the state police and National Guard to look for cars with New York license plates parked outside homes to instruct the inhabitants to self-quarantine, the immediate backlash led to a quick reversal of the policy.

But in the little more than two weeks since, it's hard to keep up with the law enforcement overreaches to enforce social distancing.

In Brighton, Colorado, a former police officer having a softball catch with his six-year-old daughter in a nearly empty park was arrested for violating social distancing guidelines. (He was released without a citation, and the department apologized for the incident.)

Then there are trickier cases, like in Minnesota, where police unions want the state government to hand over the locations of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 as a safety precaution for first responders. Or in Kentucky, where judges have ordered at least four people who refused self-quarantine orders to wear location-tracking ankle bracelets.

And then there's the cases where enforcement seems to defy the logic of the orders.

While the Florida pastor arrested for holding a large gathering at his church is unlikely to evoke much sympathy, another incident demonstrated what could be seen as an unfair and overly rigid approach to enforcement.

A Mississippi church held a "drive-in" service over the weekend and by all accounts, appeared to be taking the right social distancing precautions. The words "STAY IN CAR" were displayed on the church's marquee. Parishioners were told to keep their windows rolled up while they listened to the service, broadcast from the church on a low frequency radio station. Churchgoers were explicitly told to stay in the cars with the windows rolled up.

During the service, police surrounded the parking lot and issued $500 fines to each car for violating a curfew order that forbade religious services as non-essential gatherings.

If the "drive-in" church service violates the letter of the social distancing law, it doesn't violate its spirit. And it's this kind of overreach that's going to make it harder to convince the public to comply with stay-at-home orders in the event that a second or third wave of a coronavirus outbreak forces another mass shutdown.

Emergency powers must have an end date

From police-enforced social distancing orders to the likely creation of a national database containing private citizens' health information, we're being conditioned to accept an upheaval of our rights, and a dramatic expansion of the government's ability to keep tabs on our movements.

We're also being asked to trust authorities that these self-appointed powers are temporary and won't be abused. That's a lot of trust to ask from the government, which rarely scales back its own authority or admits when "emergency powers" are no longer necessary.

Presidents have since 1978 declared 64 national emergencies under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, according to the Brennan Center for Justice's running count. Notably, 29 of these national emergencies are still in effect, including the one signed by President Trump in March to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The first of these emergencies — signed by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and still in effect — blocks Iranian government property from entering the United States. While the US and Iran have engaged in both hot and cold conflicts in the four decades since, the national emergency was directly a result of the Iranian hostage crisis, which ended in January 1981.

The dustiness of that national emergency declaration cheapens the concept of an "emergency." It also gives lie to the premise that such declarations affording the president extraordinary powers are both necessary and temporary.

Some of the government's tactics may very well be necessary in the short term to slow the spread of the pandemic, especially since the available information about COVID-19's transmissibility seems to change by the day.

But a full month into a near-nationwide lockdown, we're still not having the national conversation about the limits that must be placed on the government's ability to know all and see all.

Someone has to watch the watchers.

That's why any extralegal efforts to combat the pandemic must have independent oversight, regular reauthorization reviews, and strict limits on how the information is used to prevent mission creep. Civilian review boards at the state and federal level could demonstrate the government's commitment to returning the extent of their powers to "normal" once the emergency is no longer an emergency.

We need a competent, coordinated government response to fight the coronavirus. We don't need another Patriot Act.