How Patriotic is the Patriot Act?

Out of the many moral issues that are debated in our country, the issue of personal liberty, may be of the greatest importance. Personal rights and liberties are guaranteed by the Constitution, which was written over 200 years ago and there is no reason why it should be debated, whether citizens are able to possess these liberties.

Many people would completely agree with this statement. However, these are the same people who follow blindly with whatever their government tells them, even if it means giving up some of their own freedoms, in fear of a foreign enemy. The Patriot Act is a recent bill passed by congress, which will allow our rights to be expendable for the sake of fighting terrorism. This act directly violates the first and fourth amendments of the constitution and people should be aware of it.

Our rights should not be expendable no matter what the reason. Our rights are what separate us from third world countries and if the people of America don't realize this, they are no better off than the people of Haiti or Cuba. This is true, because no matter the amount of food or clothing Americans own, we are on the fringes of becoming members of the third world community; where all countries have in common the fear that their possessions, including family members, can be taken away at any time without reason or warning.

The Patriot Act, which was passed on October 26, 2001, is the most outrageous act of tyranny and government abuse since Executive Order 9066 was passed in 1942; allowing for the displacement of Japanese Americans from their homes into detention camps. In both cases, the federal government was guilty of violating the constitution by taking away citizens' rights in order to bring stability and order, to a country that had been devastated by major attacks on its own soil.

However, these acts ended up doing more harm than good. The Japanese Internment camps, imprisoned approximately 120,000 Japanese citizens in fear, that they may had been spies for the Japanese army. This was devastating for the Japanese community as most Japanese Americans lost complete faith in their government. The imprisonment also sent a message that a person's rights could be spared if felt necessary by the United States government. Our government has taken a small step in sacrificing the rights of its citizens by passing the Patriot Act which has made government wiretapping on U.S citizens legal.

The question can be asked: Is it worth resorting to such an extreme measure in order to protect the people? The answer in most cases is yes, however when it comes to taking away rights, the answer should always be no. These actions by our government either expose one of two things. Either the leaders at the time of these events were completely paranoid regarding their own citizens' capabilities to threaten the power structure and therefore had to implement unnecessary precautions, or the passage of these two acts were used as a means to expand the power of the government by taking away the most precious rights of the citizens. In either case, can the actions be justified as a necessary means of preventing terrorism and or espionage through exploiting the people of the United States?

The basic facts on the Patriot Act are as follows:

The government is allowed to obtain credit records and library records, without a warrant and wiretaps without any court order for fifteen days after a terrorist attack are permissible. Individuals engaged in civil disobedience can lose their citizenship and lawful immigrants will be stripped of their right to a fair deportation hearing and federal courts are not allowed to review immigration rulings.

These are just some examples of the constitutional sections of the Patriot Act. According to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, the Act would allow for martial law in America, if the government felt the terrorist threat was great enough (Title 1, Section 104). The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now allowed to search students' grades and medical records under the cover of intelligence investigations.

Any personal information can be confiscated by the government, whether they have reason to believe that you might be a terrorist or not. According to the same source, the federal government fails to provide specific details of whom and how many cases of wiretapping activity they participate in. It may be acceptable to allow intelligence defense agencies to spy on their citizens if completely necessary, but there should be official records of at least how many investigations are going on. This would not hinder any investigative process.

The government should try to focus on finding terrorist threats from suspected enemies. However, the Patriot Act aims at busting citizens inside the United States. According to the article by George H. Pike, the FBI was once only obligated to target a specific foreign threat during investigation, who they believed to be operating in the United States. However, now they can retrieve information to use for an investigation of any sort, without even identifying an enemy.

For instance, the FBI may decide to look at someone's medical records, although they have no reason to suspect you as a threat. (Information Today, 18). This violates the fourth amendment of the constitution which states, "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."

The Act also violates the First Amendment of free speech, as the Patriot Act forbids recipients of search orders, from telling others about the orders. The National Securities Letter Report indicated that the FBI issued more than 140,000 informational requests between 2003 and 2005 and the majority of those requests were issued to obtain telephone and electronic communications records and about 45 percent of those targeted, are U.S. citizens.

It is reasonable to investigate on a dangerous threat to our country; however, it is absurd and unjustifiable when almost half of these requests are for American citizens, especially when a clear violation of the constitution is present.

A common argument for the Patriot Act is that most people have nothing to hide anyway. This fact should not stop people from demanding their right to have their privacy, because as the threat of terrorism becomes more severe, more and more rights will be taken away; until we are left dependent on our government, with no autonomy.

History has taught us with such regimes as Hitler and such events as the red scare that fear makes people act irrational. Right now we are acting irrational by letting our government destroy the constitution. Since September 11th, it has become the government's job to protect us from terrorism and in turn they maintain the ability to track our everyday lives.

If the Bill of Rights can be altered because of one attack, we are not living in a democracy, but in tyranny. A country where the leaders can impose their will on the people without public consent. Who are the terrorists we are trying to stop anyway? While Al Queda and Muslim extremists supposedly executed attacks on the World Trade Center and should be punished, I think that powerful people in the White House who are trying to defame the constitution should be held in check.

While there may be domestic terrorists who would be willing and capable to pose a threat to national security, the percentage of information that was requested on American citizens, is unreasonable and would lead the average person to believe that their government might not be looking out for the best interests of their citizens.

It is now clear that the Patriot Act infringes on our rights as American citizens like no other act that has ever been passed. Now the question is, is it necessary in fighting terrorism? Foreign terrorism has been labeled as the dilemma of the coming centuries and even the Twenty-First century's version of the Cold War.

To be frank, it doesn't concern me. I would rather live freely with all my constitutional rights, than be under constant surveillance from a Big Brother, who seems to care more about its own power than protecting the citizens. Even if the government is sincere in their efforts of National Security, I don't need such staunch security. I can fend for myself. Whatever the government needs to do to stop terrorism is fine with me, as long as they stay out of my personal business.

If they can't fight terrorism effectively without intruding, then I'll deal with the consequences. I am not quite sure what objective the government has in trying to pass such seemingly unconstitutional acts against the American people, however, based on the defamation of the constitution; the likelihood this type of legislation has positive intentions seems low. Instead this government seems to be heading in the direction of a type of big brother control state, where everything can be tracked. This type of surveillance will become increasingly easier with new types of technology such as microchips and identification tracking numbers.

In fact, our future is beginning to sound more and more like something from a science fiction novel. By using these types of devices it will be very easy to identify one from another and there will probably be no more worrying about terrorist threats. However, by this time, all of our day to day actions and information will be stored on some government computer by which they can be pulled up at any time. This is just the direction we are headed. Many may feel that this is necessary for safety and peace of mind; however, I strongly oppose such actions.

Sources:
Trandahl, Jeff. Patriot Act HR 3162 RDS 107th Congress 1st Session. Electronic Privacy Information Center. 24 Oct. 2001 http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

Pike, George. The PATRIOT Act Illuminated Informa