Should the Patriot Act Remain in Effect in Its Present Form?

¶ … U.S.A. PATRIOT Act Remain in Effect in Its Present Form? For more than 200 years, the level of civil liberties afforded American citizens has waxed and waned according to the perceived level of threats arrayed against the nation's interests, with the most recent example of curtailment being the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act which was enacted hard on the heels of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Despite the guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights, this law has seriously eroded the civil liberties of all Americans in an overly zealous attempt to ferret out terrorists wherever they may hide. This paper provides a definition of the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act's purpose and main powers, following by a review of the relevant literature concerning whether it should be abolished or preserved. An argument in favor of the Act's abolishment is followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorist Act, or USA PATRIOT Act (hereinafter "the Act") was rushed though the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George Bush mere weeks later on October 26, 2001. The Act's was written by the U.S. Department of Justice in order to increase the powers of federal agencies to use electronic surveillance to intercept communications (both nationally and internationally), to conduct various searches, and to detain terrorist suspects (Bonet 46).

Proponents of the Act argue that this legislation was needed to help protect American borders against foreign terrorist threats and to eliminate any domestic threats as well (Bonet 46). In sum, the Act facilitated the creation of new crimes, new penalties and provided more efficient procedures that could be used against international and domestic terrorists (Bonet 46).

Moreover, proponents also point out that the Act did not contain any sweeping changes that adversely affected the civil liberties of average Americans, and many of its provisions had been carefully scrutinized in the past, sometimes for several years. In this regard, Kerr emphasizes that, "Many of the Patriot Act's provisions had been proposed by the Clinton Administration long before September 11, and had been debated and discussed for years both within law enforcement and civil libertarian circles" (608).

Furthermore, the provisions of the Act were congruent with the fundamental legal structure created by Congress in 1986 codified in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (Kerr 608). In fact, Kerr argues that critics of the Act simply do not understand what it does, nor do they fully grasp the need for the law in the first place.

For instance, Kerr points out that, "Ironically, while the media braced for extreme measures following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Internet surveillance provisions enacted into law by the Patriot Act broke little new ground" (609).

Notwithstanding these protestations to the contrary, though, critics of the Act counter that the provisions of the Patriot Act are being expanded far beyond their original intent and scope, and because it is impossible to obtain any concrete evidence concerning the Act's efficacy or ongoing need, the federal government has essentially created a culture of fear among ordinary Americans that is not justified by the threat.

In this regard, Rosen reports that, "If the Patriot Act were focused on investigating potential terrorists, rather than spying on innocent Americans, then we would still need it" (1). Indeed, the Act is not needed today, Rosen argues, and it was not needed when it was enacted: "Unfortunately, it was never focused on potential terrorists: many of its most controversial provisions were the same expansions of law enforcement authority that federal and state officials had sought after the Waco siege and the Oklahoma City bombing" (1).

As noted in the introduction, the level of civil liberties afforded Americans tends to ebb and flow with the perceived levels of threats arrayed against the nation's interest. For example, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by President Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War and hundreds of thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interred during World War II, purportedly for their own safety but in conditions that made it clear they were being punished for the crimes of their Japanese countrymen.

In fact, many observers were heard to remark on September 11, 2001 that "things will never be the same again," and it was these elevated fears that allowed the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act to slide through the U.S. Congress faster than the French army can perform an about-face. In this regard, Rosen points out that the climate was right post-9/11 for this most recent erosion of American civil liberties: "In the 1990s, civil libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives were able.