Anti-Terrorism Strategies Vs. Privacy and Civil LibertiesJoin now to read essay Anti-Terrorism Strategies Vs. Privacy and Civil LibertiesAnti-Terrorism Strategies vs. Privacy and Civil LibertiesThe United States of America is the freest country in the world, yet privacy and civil liberties are increasingly being violated by government. To prevent future attacks like 9/11 from occurring, the federal government has dramatically tightened security and enforced investigation measures by passing an anti-terrorism legislation, the Patriot Act, on October 26th, 2001. These policies put American civil liberties and privacy at jeopardy and are utterly useless at eradicating terrorism. The government should not have the right to intrude on people’s lives by using legislations such as the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act introduced legislative changes that enforced the government’s surveillance and expanded its investigation rights, enabling it to access private information about anyone without their knowledge or consent. The U.S. government has manipulated thousands of people by using the Patriot Act this way. Thousands of telephone conversations have been eavesdropped upon, computers and Internet use have been monitored, and suspects have been detained without a valid cause. For instance, today most important messages are sent by electronic mail. The federal government has tried to limit our right to keep our electronic mail private. It has even suggested a Clipper Chip system by which it would detain
The Patriot Act and Government Torture The first two part of the story is about government surveillance by the Patriot Act: It is one of the more dangerous parts of the Bill of Rights. The Second part includes the “Terrorist Activities Act” that criminalizes all forms of “information warfare”; it was drafted in an era when the United States was on the defensive on the Iraq War. This act has increased surveillance on Americans by the U.S. government and its allies, by allowing them to be wiretapped and searched in order to conduct surveillance over the Internet without even having your right in the first place to know. (The law has also expanded federal powers to obtain intelligence on terrorists by collecting and gathering information about them through the FISA Amendments Act, a program that the ACLU and other legal opponents of the surveillance use. The law protects the privacy that the First Amendment requires) The second part refers to the Department of Justice’s ongoing civil–national-security effort to undermine transparency, especially in Washington. The government seeks to stifle any person who expresses an opinion about a program, or does something that is potentially harmful to national security. This includes what the ACLU describes as “warrantless targeting” of people. [l] This latest version of the Bill of Rights expands domestic spy measures such as collection on “foreigners who communicate with persons who have not been identified as foreign nationals, a list of individuals to be surveilled, all of which are being targeted by the FBI…” The other important portions of this last part of the bill are the “Privacy Shield Act,” which has the effect of increasing the limits to the communications of Americans on government and their private property. In other words, we’ll likely end up with a federal government who is already spying on us, but who is being kept entirely off the radar and can’t be sued. The next two parts also focus on privacy rights. In other words, we’ll have more restrictions on the use of the telephone for government officials and government employees through the Patriot Act, and, if we want privacy, we’ll be limited in our ability to call government and private networks. Under this legislation the government might secretly share information with us to obtain information on us, or could share only the information it collects to protect the privacy of the nation. In other words, this will have a chilling effect on Americans’ freedom of speech and ideas. [mo]
As with the first part of the story, the third one is about civil liberties. A number of factors contribute to the Patriot Act’s passage, including: One that many view as questionable the government’s role in the implementation of the law and the limits to surveillance of people who speak about national security; The potential for indefinite detention of nonwhite Americans to target terrorist activities and terrorism-related activities based on their race or religion; and Implications for domestic terrorism law. The second part of the Patriot