¶ … 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...
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…
