In the two months since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. citizens need to stop and pause.

During this war on terrorism, the civil liberties of people living in the United States are being challenged daily as a part of “homeland security” by Attorney General John Ashcroft’s methods to prevent future attacks.

His latest rule completely ignores the principle of lawyer-client privacy by allowing investigators to monitor phone calls and mail between terrorist suspects and their defense lawyers.

In prison, inmates have two phone options for talking with their lawyers – one in which calls are monitored and one where the client and lawyer can talk in private.

Ashcroft’s proposal removes the private option.

This rule, published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register, states that the monitoring can take place when Ashcroft concludes there is “reasonable suspicion” that the communication is related to future terrorist acts.

That is giving Ashcroft an unbelievable amount of power in deciding which “suspects” are worthy of being wiretapped.

If the prison officials tell the possible terrorist that his or her legal conversations are being taped, what kind of “real” terrorist is going to talk about already-planned attacks?

And it’s going to be harder to work toward plea agreements with these terrorists when they aren’t given the opportunity to discuss what they know privately with their lawyers.

Apparently the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” is trivial enough to be thrown out the window when it comes to the possibility of catching future terrorists.

This decision not only adversely affects the criminal suspects, but also their lawyers.

The law community has been left stunned, wondering what to do now that the absolute secrecy of conversations with clients is gone.

And the American Civil Liberties Union is raising all kinds of concerns. The national director of the ACLU said “this proposal is a terrifying nightmare for innocent people who are under suspicion by the attorney general.”

The government has defended its actions by saying “it was necessary to put the rule in effect without public comment to allow the justice department to respond to current intelligence and law enforcement concerns relating to threats of national security or risks of terrorism.”

Should the federal government do all it can to protect the American public from future terrorist attacks? Yes.

Should that include trampling all over the civil liberties and constitutional rights American democracy is founded upon? No.

People who are still suspects, whether John Ashcroft believes are involved or not, are still guaranteed the same rights to a fair trial as everyone else. This rule is against the American principles it is so erroneously trying to protect.

editorialboard: Andrea Hauser, Tim Paluch, Michelle Kann, Zach Calef, Omar Tesdell