Re: HR 1955
 

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`(a) In General- The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.

`(b) Commitment to Racial Neutrality- The Secretary shall ensure that the activities and operations of the entities created by this subtitle are in compliance with the Department of Homeland Security's commitment to racial neutrality issued in an Department-wide Memorandum on June 1, 2004.

`(c) Auditing Mechanism- The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer of the Department of Homeland Security will develop and implement an auditing mechanism to ensure that compliance with this subtitle does not result in a disproportionate impact, without a rational basis, on any particular race, ethnicity, or religion and include within its annual report to Congress required under section 705.'.

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I'm no lawyer, so maybe this is completely above me but it seems like we're creating another government department which has to comply with standards set in a memo that some other department which was just recently created sent out. There's no particular oversight, certainly no need to answer to the public. Some officer, who nobody really knows anything about, is vaguely going to create a mechanism of some sort to ensure that this is completely fair.

But hey, they said they weren't going to violate civil liberties, so no worries!

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They said the won't violate them "in general".

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I think that "In General" in this case (a legal document) means "in all cases and absolutely", not the "generally speaking" colloquial sense of the term.