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Argumentative Essay On The Patriot Act

667 Words3 Pages

After the gruesome attacks of 9/11, the United States government passed a legislation called the Patriot Act in attempt to cut down on the terror attacks. This act gives the NSA, or National Security Agency, the ability to oversee our actions. The NSA’s approach to surveilling the population is obtaining the information by tapping into technology, such as phone calls, internet pages and searches, and viewing emails and texts. Thus, controversy has triggered due to the fact that these actions are unconstitutional, and much terrorism that remains. The NSA should be greatly altered because they invade the privacy of Americans, unlawfully goes against the constitution, and we lose our rights. To begin with, the NSA invades the privacy of American citizens through the use of surveillance. According to the text “People in most cities are probably captured on cameras daily, if not multiple times a day," Harper said. "As these cameras network together, and they as they are better capable at recognizing individual faces, people will realize just how they are being watched" (Moriarty). Innocent people are being recorded when they have no reason to be surveilled. …show more content…

According to the text “Our value is founded on a unique and deep understanding of risks, vulnerabilities, mitigations, and threats. Domestic Surveillance plays a vital role in our national security by using advanced data mining systems to "connect the dots" to identify suspicious patterns” (NSA). One of the slogans of the NSA is, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. However, if you have nothing to hide there is no argumentation as to why the NSA taps into any form of communication or access to the internet. Therefore, this withdraws the power of the people and puts it directly back into the government and, simultaneously belittles citizen’s

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Although the Patriot Act presents virtually many positives, the overall aspect of its existence is detrimental to the citizens of the United States as a whole. Originally being passed in order to protect the country from acts of terrorism, the specificities of the Patriot Act were never underlined which has since led to a much more generalized definition of what legal actions can be pursued on the basis of the Act. Essentially, the Patriot Act should be abolished because it infringes on constitutional rights of citizens, it lacks effectiveness in its goal, and the manner in which it was passed makes you question whether or not it was fully thought through. The Founding Fathers created the Constitution in order to protect the rights of citizens

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And, in today’s world, technology is everywhere; most people have phones, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, computers, cameras, GPS systems, gaming consoles, or other Internet-connected devices. The NSA is able to use any and all of these things to spy on unsuspecting citizens without their consent. The way they spy, however, is not as simple as it may seem. Unlike in 1984, where all that is used are video cameras, the NSA can sift through text messages, phone calls, voicemails, emails, web browsing history, photos, videos, and anything else stored on a device. They use the information gained through this and run them through what they call “sniffers,” which are programs that search for certain keywords, phrases, types of pictures and videos, and websites.

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