Which of the two was more draconian
In the wake of the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11 the US Congress enacted the Patriot's Act. The curtailment of civil liberties and the assumption of the power of internal espionage by the Federal Government, now hotly contested, are the hallmarks of the Act. However this was not the first time that such draconian legislation has been enated in US history.
Even before the sinking of USS Lusitania by German U- boats in 1915, the Administration of Woodrow Wilson had taken the irrevocable step toward the abridgement of civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution. The only time a similar step was taken in US history was during the Civil War when Abraham Lincon suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Wilson forced Congress to pass the Espionage Act. This act empowered the Post Master General of the US Albert Sidney Burleson the right to refuse to deliver mail considered unpatriotic or was critical of US war conduct and policy. The Attorney General, Thomas Gregory went even further: Hew was a progressive, responsible for nominating Louis Brandeis to the US Supreme Court.. He pushed through a law that made even thought of criticism a "crime". Wilson using the emergency of war as a pretext pushed through an ever obliging Congress a Sedition Act that made it punishable by 20 years in jail "to utter,print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the governemnt of the United States".
This rather strange and some would even add un constitutional Act was challenged in the US Supreme Court. The great jurist Oliver Werndell Holmes held the Sedition Act constitutional by arguing that the First Amendment did not protect speech "if words used... create a clear and present danger".
Woodrow Wilson generally remembered as an idealist in politics and the only trained historian ever to be elected to high office in the US did trample on civikl liberty in much the same manner as the present administration.