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The Pros And Cons Of The Patriot Act

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Critics of the PATRIOT Act claim that with too much power, comes corruption. The PATRIOT Act gave new powers to the United States Intelligence community in which is made up of 17 agencies. Some of the most notable are the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies. The Patriot Act enabled international and domestic surveillance of electronic communications; it also removed legal barriers that had blocked law enforcement, intelligence, and defense agencies from sharing information about potential terrorist threats and coordinating efforts to respond to them. Many critics of the PATRIOT Act raised concerns surrounding …show more content…

Many of these concerns were given credibility in 2013 when NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information showing that the National Security Agency was using the law to acquire the bulk collection of data related to millions of communications. “NSA cited Section 215 of the Patriot Act as justification for the program, which the agency said was aimed at helping to identify and track possible terrorism suspects. In addition, federal officials said that the special-purpose Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved the NSA's data-collection practices on multiple occasions. But in May 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that the program violated the Patriot Act in an opinion on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. The PATRIOT Extension Act expired as scheduled at the start of June 2015 after the Senate was unable to agree on a proposed extension.” As Mr. Cusick stated, what Edward Snowden failed to disclose or fail to see was the whole picture. He was not privileged to see how some aspects of information fit with others. With or without this understanding, Snowden painted a grim picture of NSA’s practices regarding the privacy millions of citizens. By doing so, he severely damaged the nations intelligence gathering capability and put the lives of many at

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