WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (AFP) - Fears of a new September 11 have drowned out talk of civil liberties in the US election campaign even though the attacks led to legislation that campaigners say gave the government vast unchecked powers.
The last election debate between President George W. Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry -- which focused on domestic issues -- yielded no mention of basic civil liberties.
The two have clashed though over the Patriot Act, which was passed six weeks after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and gave the administration wide powers in the name of the war on terrorism.
Many of the provisions will end on December 31 unless Congress renews them. Bush, who has styled himself as a "war president", has launched a campaign to get backing for the law, whose full name is Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.
Bush has called the legislation "a powerful tool in the war on terror," and hails its use to break up terror cells in the United States and arrest hundreds of suspects.
Kerry supported the Patriot Act when Congress approved it in October 2001 but now says it is too harsh and calls for increased checks on surveillance powers.
Groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) say the act placed "an array of new tools at the disposal of the prosecution, including new crimes, enhanced penalties and longer statutes of limitation."
"Today I have to worry about not only driving while black, but flying while Muslim. It's a challenge," Mahdi Bray, director of the Muslim American Society told a congressional hearing this week on civil liberties in post-9/11 America.
Mahdi and other civil liberties advocates say Americans might be safer today than before September 11, but suggest that security has been achieved through the questionable use of secret wire taps, unnecessarily restrictive airline security, and racial profiling of Muslims and Arab Americans.
He cited the detentions of hundreds of "decent, law-abiding Muslims" after September 11 -- the vast majority of whom were never charged with a terrorism-related offense.
Ron Daniels, executive director of the CCR said civil liberties in the United States are "in a state of deterioration, to put it mildly."
"Under this administration there has been a subversion of the constitution, there has been a blatant attempt to circumvent international law, to ignore it in all of its dimensions as it applies to torture, detentions, the definition of detainees, the circumvention of the Geneva Convention."
While the tension between civil liberties and national security has become a fault line in US politics, most voters fall squarely on the security side of the divide.
A poll last month by the Annenberg Center found that 67 percent of Americans say they feel safer now thanks to the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror. Just 22 percent said they felt less safe.
Legions of suburban "moms" who are expected to play a critical role in the November 2 election have indicated in polls that they will vote for the candidate who best can safeguard US security.
But Laura Murphy, head of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, suggested that focusing on security at the expense of civil liberties is a mistake.
"We all want to be free from terrorism. We want to be safe and free, we want to have our civil rights intact, and we want our borders protected.
"But we do not want to be a country that lives with the stain of discrimination, both abroad and domestically," Murphy said.
"Those are not concerns just for Democrats and Republicans, but they're concerns that are universal in nature."