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Pros And Cons Of The Patriot Act

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America has passed a lot of laws and acts to uphold those laws but sometimes we aren’t too sure if those laws were necessary. When the government passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, we were in a time of war. When Executive Order 9066 was issued, we were still in a time of war. The USA Patriot Act was passed at a time where war could have been around the corner. The Espionage Act was passed in 1917, the year America entered into World War 1. The Sedition Act was passed the next year. Our government was scared that people being allowed to talk openly about whatever they wanted would lead to fewer people would want to join the army or become disloyal to their home country These fears led to the act of taking away one of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people …show more content…

The USA Patriot Act allowed the government to watch people through the internet, their phone conversations, and via satellites. The reason for this act was to make sure the government had a form of surveillance so there wouldn’t be another terrorist attack. President Bush was very excited to have this act passed because he thought that it would help intelligence operations and anti-criminal operations the chance to trade information to catch any possible terrorists. Nick Anderson, a cartoonist for Washington Post, believed that the government was throwing out the Constitutional ways to make this act a new law. Mary Jo White, a former U.S. Attorney from the southern district of New York, believed that this act was a good one to have but thought that if the right to privacy was taken away it would never be given back. She also thought that the government was ignoring the constitution when they were making this

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