Patriot Act Section 215

In conjunction with the above mentioned acts of terror, The Patriot Act section 215 that was passed in congress in 2001 in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attach reads. The section 215 reads, access to record items under the foreign intelligence surveillance act. The foreign intelligence surveillance act of 1978 reads, prescribes procedures for requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power. When comparing the two acts against the fourth Amendment it is a violation of American’s privacy. The Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,

Every American is being monitored even without reasonable cause for the government to be monitoring them. The intentions of both acts were to monitor Americans who are supporting the terrorist and help fight the terrorist crimes within our country. The problem is that the government is over stepping that line and is monitoring everyone’s phone data. Phone data is not a reasonable source to gain suspicion of someone who a terrorist or helping a terrorist. Washington Post has posted on May 24, 2015 that the FBI confirms that no major terrorism cases were caught form the Patriot phone data collection (Krieger, 2015)

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a law suit against the government in 2013. The case provides evidence that the Patriot Act is infringing on American’s privacy, freedom of speech and association. Within the Patriot Act, surveillance of phone records such as phone numbers, and duration is being collected across the United States. The ACLU deals with defending the civil liberties and those phone surveillance and would have drastic impact on how they advocate for Civil rights (Kaufman,

Our country was founded on the constitution and the way the government is stepping over the line with the Patriot Act is unreasonable. People need to speak out and defend our rights so that we don’t become a martial law country. Martial law country is basically where the constitution is suspended, and you have no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of assembly and you could be arrested at any time for any reason whatsoever. The military would be completely in control (Synder, 2015). This is a very scary thought that in our country there would be no rights. Our country was founded on check and balances and we need to get back to that prevent the overtaking of our