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Pros And Cons Of The USA Patriot Act

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After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the United States government reacted quickly and firmly with the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). The purpose of this act was to prevent another terror attack of the same magnitude as the 9/11 attack, but some people believe this act encroaches too heavily on civil rights. The USA PATRIOT Act (Patriot Act) threatens liberty more than it hinders terrorism, goes against the Constitution, and needs to be modified so it doesn’t breach the Constitution.
The USA PATRIOT Act interferes with the liberties of companies and people in the United States while doing more to impact lawful Americans than terrorists. …show more content…

Prior to the Patriot act a search warrant was needed, after the Patriot Act a search warrant is no longer required for agents to employ surveillance “…when looking into the full range of terrorism-related crimes,” (Dept. of Justice). The Patriot Act allows federal officials to gather information for suspected terrorist activity without needing to have evidence. In addition to this, Howard Ball observed that in the seventh title of the Patriot Act information is able to be shared between federal, state, and local law enforcement (52). Banks and Tauber analyzed federal district court decisions on cases regarding the Patriot act and they found, “[T]hey [district courts] are not inclined to protect civil rights and liberties during times of domestic or international conflict.” They continue to note that judicial ideology does not affect the outcomes of these cases, that civil-libertarian interest groups make a deferential decision less likely, and that if a more conservative Senate and president are in power a deferential decision is more …show more content…

Legislation was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee that would allow roving wiretap powers in the Patriot Act for four more years (Is it legal?: PATRIOT Act vol. 59). A roving wiretap will be able to record the conversations of everyone in the area and is able to move. By reauthorizing roving wiretaps, it allows the recording of American citizens without their expressed permission. A court case where a U.S. District Court Judge named Richard Leon ruled that the NSA must stop collecting phone call data from a business network owned by J.J. Little and his law firm (Judge Issues Narrow Ruling in Challenge to USA PATRIOT Act). In the same article it is said that, “Leon previously said the bulk collection of phone records is likely unconstitutional.” The problem of the NSA collecting phone data and storing the information continued to be a problem over a decade after the Act was signed into law. “In a May 2015 decision, a federal appellate court found the aforementioned program to be illegal under the PATRIOT Act… Collecting massive records in a database for some ‘hypothetical future time’ was not relevant under the statute” (Pike USA PATRIOT Act Still Raising Questions). The Patriot Act allows the government to ignore the constitution when it comes to imprisonment of suspected terrorists and allows the government to spy on its

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In a world of continuous technological advancements, as a substantial advantage, the USA PATRIOT Act modernizes the law to recognize present-day threats and attacks. Based on reports by the Justice Department, prior to the introduction of the USA PATRIOT Act, some laws within the United States failed to account for modern-day technological advancements (Department of Justice, 2017). As an example, under the USA PATRIOT Act, government or law enforcement agencies are permitted to utilize advanced technological means to locate or identify individuals, if necessary. Furthermore, with technological advancements allowing for long-distance planning and attacks, contributors to the Congressional Digest report that the USA PATRIOT Act allows some officials

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Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the United States government to gather foreign intelligence information concerning persons located outside of the country that are, or are connected to, a potential threat against the nation. In addition to protecting national security, the communications data collected under Section 702 has been used for criminal prosecution in domestic court cases. Since it passed in 2008, scholars have raised questions over the act’s constitutionality, especially about its consistence with the Fourth Amendment which protects both US and non-US persons against unreasonable searches and seizures. These scholars argue that not all communications gathered under Section 702 meet the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment and should therefore not be used in criminal cases. However, Section 702 mainly conflicts with the Constitution only when the act is used inappropriately by agencies to investigate people residing within the US rather than for its intended purpose of gathering foreign intelligence.

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The Patriot Act will be one of the most controversial pieces of legislation ever to be passed by the United States’ government. People in our society nowadays give the ultimatum “pro security, or anti-freedom?” That is not the Patriot Acct in a nutshell; it is far from that statement. There are more cons than there are pros, but the pros that have come out of the passage of the Patriot Act may have saved millions of American and international lives from the destruction of terrorist. That being said the lives that were saved did come at a price of the American citizens’ privacy and broke numerous amendments from the Bill of Rights.

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There has been and still are many debates concerning this law. During the law signing ceremony on October 2001 Bush gave a speech saying, “The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones, this new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorist, including

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In other words, they are collecting a lot of data from our phone conversations, emails, and social networking communications every single day. As the article states, it says that when Congress passed the Patriot Act, it expanded federal officials’ powers to keep tabs on most of our personal information. Not only are they intercepting emails, but they are also tracking credit card use, cell phone call, and car travel. This may seem a bit invasive, but a survey shows that about ⅔ of Americans are willing to put up with the personal impositions in order to prevent

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In December 2005, the National Security Agency was accused of wiretapping into calls without having a warrant. The program was confirmed by President Bush and many other public officials who considered the taping legal. The American Civil Liberties Union pressed a lawsuit. ACLU states “A federal judge in Detroit found the program both unconstitutional and illegal.” Furthermore, the case was appealed and entered the U.S. Court of Appeals where the circuit overturned the ruling stating “the plaintiffs could not prove with certainty the NSA was wiretapping phones, but decided not to rule on the

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According the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the most important and unconstitutional parts is in Section 215 of the act. It expanded ability for the government to gain access to third party records such as internet service providers and cell phone service providers. One of the most significant provisions of the Patriot Act makes it far easier for the authorities to gain access to records of citizens ' activities being held by a third party. This also would include forcing doctors, lawyers, anyone at all that has electronic communications records to turn such records over to the FBI when requested. Another concern raised by the ACLU is the provision’s violation of the 4th Amendment which allows investigates to conduct such searches without showing probable cause.

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Critics are still arguing that such “powerful” Bill had to be debated and deliberated. Secondly, it is also considered that Patriot Act violates the constitutional civil liberties of the United States, especially: right to privacy, freedom from unreasonable searches, conducting wiretaps, using NSLs, search the private property without any notification and detain a material witness or a suspect with no access to lawyer. There are many evidences when the law was used inappropriate towards non-terrorist criminals. New York Times writes: “The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.”

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The pros and cons can decide. The National Survelliance Agency has the right to monotor any call, text, email, google search, etc. that they believe could have some type of terrorist intentions. They had rcordes stored on computers of conversations, etc.

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According to the Department of Justice, 2015, The USA Patriot Act, before the Patriot Act courts could permit law enforcement to conduct electronic surveillance to investigate many non- terrorism crimes such as passport fraud, mail fraud and drug crimes but after the act was passed it enabled investigators to gather information when looking into full range terrorist related crimes. The act also allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists in which if they are they could flee, destroy evidence, intimate or kill witnesses or take on another action to evade arrest. Therefore, federal courts allowed law enforcement to delay for a limited time when the subject is told that a judicially permitted search warrant has been executed but with this delay it gives law enforcement time to identify criminal associates, eliminate threats and synchronize the arrests of multiple individuals without having them knowing or have an idea the action will take place. The Patriot Act updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats, it allows victims of computer hacking to demand law enforcement assistance in monitoring trespassers on their computers. Likewise, the act allows law enforcement to obtain a search warrant anywhere a terrorist related activity has occurred and before the act often terrorism investigations had a number of districts making police need to obtain multiple warrants in numerous jurisdictions creating avoidable delays in the investigation.

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On September 11, 2001, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States dramatically changed the global political landscape and deeply affected American society. In response to these tragic events, the U.S. government enacted a series of laws and regulations aimed at preventing future attacks and strengthening national security. Among these was the USA Patriot Act, a pivotal piece of legislation that granted expanded powers to law enforcement agencies. While these measures were designed to protect citizens from the threat of terrorism, they also sparked a significant debate about the balance between security and personal freedoms. The laws and regulations put into place after the September 11th attacks have been a double-edged

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This book explains how the NSA was able to detect the two terrorists, and how this led to breaking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Which only limited them to spying on enemies outside the country, but after 9/11 they had abandoned this policy and began spying within the United States. Bamford illustrates that after 9/11, the NSA had access to an infinite amount of data, and they used this access without obtaining any legal documentation from courts. This process, as Bamford termed it, “warrantless wiretapping”. Meaning the NSA would “wiretap” without consent from the government or anything, violating American laws and even American

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1691 Words | 7 Pages

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows U.S. intelligence agencies to acquire foreign intelligence information by monitoring foreign persons in the USA and abroad. This act ensures that intelligence agencies can respond in time to terminate a security threat. The most important part of this act, the Section 702 forbids deliberate monitoring of US citizens and their communication. Technically NSA has been violating this act ever since it has been enacted in 2008 because, as we know, they have been monitoring all US citizenry.

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The 4th Amendment of the constitution “prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be issued by a judge and supported by a probable cause” (constitution, par. 4). If this is the case then the Supreme Court will need to issue 8 billion warrants because not only does the NSA spy on us they also spy on other countries. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments act gives broad targeting guidelines for people outside of the United States. Due to this new Act, America is now allowed to spy on people in other countries if they have reason to believe that they are “suspects.” Based on a study of the largest sample of Section 702 data analyzed to date, approximately 90% of the text messages, emails, instant messages, and other communications retained by NSA, even after the application of minimization procedures, are to or from accounts who are not surveillance targets” (Laperuqque).

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4. Abuse of the Patriot Act— Several provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire at the end of 2005 and, despite opposition from across the political spectrum and more than 400 community and state resolutions expressing concern about the Patriot Act, Congress reauthorized the law without reforming its most flawed provisions to bring these extraordinary powers back in line with the Constitution. Since then, the Justice Department 's Inspector General found that the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of national security letters, a majority against U.S. persons, and many without any connection to terrorism at

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