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The Fourth Amendment makes people in American feel safe and secure. David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?” says,"a few years after it aired the director of national Intelligence admitted illegal surveillance was still taking place"(understand). " the Government’s unverified assertion that it has halted “systemic” illegal/unconstitutional surveillance by the National Security Administration." says David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?”(Understand). Sirota also states "The NSA is admitting that even with an outdated 1997 supreme court ruling it knows it cannot post mass collect metadata with no warrants whatsoever.
One group that argues this is the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly disagrees with the Patriot Act. They have stated that investigations into the Patriot Act, “reveal thousands of violations of law,” (ACLU), while this is simply not true. One controversial piece of the Patriot Act are roving wiretaps. These allow government investigators to follow and put surveillance on certain people, rather than certain devices, so that they may save time and effort. According to Nathan Sales, a law professor at George Mason University, “Federal courts agree that Title III’s roving wiretaps authority is constitutional and… provides strong support for constitutionality,” (Sales).
Now in today’s standards, you only have freedom of semi-privacy that the Patriot Act believes is non-threatening. By them monitoring your texts, emails, history along with things you look for in search engines you never truly free to say anything or look up anything you want. Also what followed after this act were the random abductions of people. They take the “random,” person and ship them to another country to loophole their laws of not permitting torturing someone in this country. Instead they hire other countries to do their dirty work.
It gives us a broad view of how devious our government can be towards their private situations. One of the main consequences that government faces as a result of their secrets is the distrust they receive from America today. Our government can asks us to participate in their desire to know more of us but refuses to inform us with the truth. Instead of giving up our rights to our government we should be protecting them. Therefore, it is absurd that there is even a debate on whether or not we should allow our government to monitor our personal
Another major problem that could clearly lead to violations of the civil liberties of Americans is that most of the provision in the PATRIOT Act are unchecked. They state on their website that “Judicial oversight of these new powers is essentially non-existent. The government must only certify to a judge - with no need for evidence or proof - that such a search meets the statute 's broad criteria, and the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application.” The latitude given for allowing wire taps and monitoring phone call is also a sore spot for the act.
Sixty years ago Ray Bradbury wrote of a futuristic society controlled by its government. A society where books were outlawed and no one cared. He predicted a society that is similar to the society of 2015. He predicted a society that could become reality. Though the worlds of Fahrenheit 451 and 2015 are not the same, they have two similarities: a controlling government and advanced technology.
"Internet privacy has recently been a hotly debated issue. If the government does not have probable cause or a warrant to monitor internet activity, then they are not permitted to do so. I base this off of the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ” Making this claim, I believe that the Patriot Act, the National Security Agency’s surveillance, and practices like these are illegal.
On the other hand, opponents of the Patriot Act claim it violates our rights to privacy. Likewise, arguments over the patriot act are multifaceted and complex and both sides have valid points. Contenders of this act are justified in that they fear “big brother”, they fear this is a slippery slope which could move us closer to other countries where the government exerts total power over its citizens. What the opponents do not take into account is that we have more to fear from these countries that wish to kill us than we do from our own government and sometimes change is necessary to keep the threat of other countries at minimum.
The patriot act has in my opion violated the 4th amendment. It has its advantages as far as terrorizim but to normal citzens this is a complete violation of our privacy. bThe late Benjermin Franklin warned us about trading our liberty for sucureity. This act has taken away a lot of our liberties it gives the government way too much power to invade our privacy. They now have unprecedented power to monitor the phone calls, e-mails, without a warrant.
Have you ever wondered why the Patriot Act played a big part in history or why it is so important to us? Well the government has compromised our civil liberties through the use of the Patriot Act. They also abused our privacy which wasn’t fair for us. The history of the Patriot Act, the abuse of our rights, and the way everything ended made the Americans feel like they couldn’t trust their government because they felt like they were always being watched. Through the Patriot Act, the law enforcement agencies and the government are given wide optional powers to acquire information not only from suspected people but also from the law-abiding Americans.
Personal records given to the NSA or government without a probable cause or reasoning for a search warrant repels everything the Fourth Amendment represents. As said by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis “Now the right to life has come to the right to be let alone” with the government and other associations receiving the right to track records at any moment takes away from the feeling of security the Fourth Amendment is supposed to give citizens. The confidentiality of individual’s personal belongings, feeling of security, and freedom from governmental obstruction is what makes the Fourth Amendment important to society, although search-warrants can be issued with causes that seem reasonable.
“The Patriot Act broadly undermines the rights of all Americans. It reduces judicial oversight of a host of investigative measures, including wiretaps, expands the government 's ability to track individuals ' Internet use and gives federal officials expansive new powers that are in no way limited to investigating terrorist crimes. ( thenation) It authorizes an end run around the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to conduct wiretaps and searches in criminal investigations, without probable cause of a crime, as long as the government claims that it also seeks to gather foreign intelligence--an authority that is particularly questionable in light of recent disclosures from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the FBI has
The Fourth Amendment 's permits the government to monitor people who are not even thought to be doing anything wrong (surveillance procedures).Telephone calls and emails could be under surveillance, by the NSA or any other government program (Senate Committee).Documents show NSA conducts sweeping surveillance Americans international communications (Senate Committee). The courts must determine what constitutes a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment (Fourth Amendment). Therefore, The Fourth Amendment does protect our rights to privacy under searches and seizures. The Fourth Amendment makes people in American feel safe and secure. David Sirota says, “National Intelligence admitted illegal surveillance was still taking place"(understand).
The personal liberties of Americans is what gives meaning to being an American. These liberties should be respected and upheld to the greatest efforts possible and should not be abridged by no means less than do process as exemplified by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the American Constitution. However, over time, we have learned about legislation that has been enacted by our government with said efforts to protect the nation. Hence, the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the confinement of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, the Red Scare post-WWII, and the Pentagon Papers of 1971 are all examples that depict some of the behaviors performed by the federal government that would appear to infringe on these liberties.
CITIZENFOUR ESSAY I believe everyone needs to have privacy, and privacy is a condition that on my opinion, should not be violated. Because it is the right to keeps people’s matters and relationships secret. The NSA, CIA and GCHQ are logging into people’s lives according to Edward Snowden in the movie ‘’Citizenfour’’. I don’t think what they are doing is okay, because I consider it is an invasion on private life.
