Modern Civil Liberties Violations

We have been talking a lot in class about civil liberties that have been violated in the past. How do those civil liberties violations from the past compare to civil liberties violations from the 21st century?

In the past we have seen many civil liberties violationed. This includes the Sedition Act, which stopped anybody from writing anything that opposed the government, and the Japanese Internment during World War II.

Today we are still experiencing civil liberties violations. Guantanamo Bay is an ever-present example of civil liberties being violated. The Justice Department decided that the camp was outside of U.S. legal jurisdiction. Then the Bush administration said that the detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Convention.

Any prisoner that is held in Guantanamo Bay is denied the right of habeas corpus as it states in this article. The Geneva Convention also protects the detainees from torture which has occurred in Guantanamo Bay. Finally people have been held in Guantanamo Bay for over two years without trial.

This leads to the questions, why are civil liberties constantly violated during wartime?  Are the civil liberties that are being violated today more or less justified than the civil liberties that were violated in the past?