After four years of work, a federal commission on terrorism issued its final report last week. The report was unremarkable except for one recommendation.

Aggressive antiterrorism policies, the report suggested, when combined with increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies, could have a "chilling effect" on the right to privacy and other fundamental civil liberties. To prevent that from happening, the commission recommended that the White House establish a bipartisan panel to review how constitutional guarantees would be affected by all new laws and regulations aimed at enhancing national security.