This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 26, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown. The Civil Liberties

implications of a pandemic are hard to overstate. Governors ordering the closure of businesses

imposing restrictions on the kinds of activities

people can share with each other, and of course federal law enforcers seeking special powers.

However much these actions might make sense over a brief time period, how best to keep them for becoming a long-term ratcheting up of government authority.

Cato's Patrick Eddington comments.

I've seen a lot of police departments talking about what they won't be

responding to in the in the coming weeks and some of those are you know certain fender benders certain kinds of

mistreatment of intentional mistreatment of one another that they won't be responding to and

yet on the flip side the feds you see a lot of move to get emergency powers. So what do you make of those efforts

so far and do any of them make sense to you?

Well, I don't think there's any question that, you know,

the stay-at-home orders and all the rest of that,

given the nature of the virus right now are clearly steps that actually need to be taken.

And I think it's a good news story that we're seeing, as you indicated, police departments and other law enforcement related entities basically saying they're not going to enforce what some are referring to his quality of life crimes or you know things of that nature.

I think that's great. What has me deeply concerned

quite frankly is this political piece that ran on March 24th by Josh Gerstein

the headline of which is those who intentionally spread

coronavirus could be charged as terrorists. The subhead, the Justice

Department offers guidance on how to deal with, quote, purposeful exposure and infection of others end quote and they're clearly you know drawing on

War on terror language and experience here and the the political piece goes on to quote a memo that was sent out by Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen to U.S. attorneys across the country

quote because coronavirus appears to meet the statutory definition of a quote biological agent and quote, such acts potentially could implicate the nation's terrorism related statutes.

...