American Civil Liberties at War With Terrorism
Americans agreed that extreme measures needed to be taken after the 9/11 Terrorist attacks. Congress and President Bush created the Patriot Act. Its creation was intended to expand law enforcement’s power, decrease citizen’s privacy and enhance domestic security in hopes of identifying and stopping terrorists in the future. A controversial issue has been whether the Patriot Act really does more harm than good for U.S. citizens. On one hand, some argue the Act infringes on many civil freedoms through the expanded surveillance tactics that authorities are allowed to forgo. Also, many argue the Patriot Act directly violates the 1st and 4th Amendments by violating citizens right to privacy and free speech. From this perspective, many feel the act was rushed into law before enough effort was made to understand why the Federal Agencies failed to stop the terrorist attack on 9/11.
On the other hand, however, others argue that
the added surveillance and expansion of law enforcement’s authority is
necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks from occurring. According to
this view, the Patriot Act helps to protect the country, and is worth sacrificing
one’s civil liberties for. My own view is that The Patriot Act should be
abolished or completely reinstated. There are too many ludicrous provisions
that hurt American’s personal freedoms. Though I concede that security is a
serious issue in our country, I still maintain that the United States as a
whole would be better off without the Patriot Act. The security that the act
offers is not worth the freedoms it takes away. There must be ways for the
government to increase security without making average citizens feel like
suspects in their own homeland. Because the country was still in a state of
shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I believe the government made rash
decisions when creating the Patriot Act. The Act was hastily put together out
of fear. Therefore, it has many flaws. In result, authorities have been granted
way too much power.
Not
only do citizens feel like their civil liberties are being deprived from them,
but powerful leaders can see the inconsistencies in the Patriot Act as well. For
example, last October, then House Majority Leader Dick Armey branded our own
Justice Department “the biggest threat to personal liberty in the country”
(Bouvard, James). Under the Patriot Act, many titles on surveillance threaten
the privacy of all Americans. The Irony
in the name “Patriot Act” tricks Americans into thinking their freedoms are
being protected, but in reality they are being stripped away. Mr. Armey
believes it is unpatriotic to give up one’s right to privacy. Three extremely
controversial surveillance related titles under the Patriot Act include: the
government's expansion of power over wiretapping, law enforcements ability to
evoke 'Sneak and Peek' warrants, and authorities increased ease of access to
citizen's private financial records. All of these titles are a potential threat
to a citizen’s right to privacy. Essentially, I am arguing not that we should
do away with the Patriot Act completely, but that we should seriously consider
the use of these three titles and make extreme modifications or delete them.
The
first controversial topic is under Section 206 of the Patriot Act, which gives
authorities the right to use a ‘roving John Doe wiretap”, which involves
secretly monitoring any citizen’s phone and email communications. Under this
provision, the government can attain intelligence surveillance orders that
neither identify the person nor the facility to be tapped. This means that the
government can pursue you even if there is no suspicion that you’ve even
committed a crime (Reform the Patriot Act). This is a direct violation of the Fourth
Amendment, where authorities were required to have 'probably cause' to monitor
and track their citizens. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? The
Patriot Act is deceiving us by sounding like a unifying and strengthening
force, but in reality is breaking citizens down and targeting them as suspects.
Prior to the act, a specific target was required to permit roving wiretaps,
which supported citizen’s privacy and influenced a more ‘innocent until proven
guilty’ mentality. To further portray the extremity of surveillance under this
act, New York Times columnist, William Safire, warns, “…every Web site you
visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every
bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend—all these
transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department
describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database” (Bovard, James). The
Department of Defense apparently believes that if they gather all personal
information from every citizen in the U.S., then they will be able to protect
everyone from anything. To me, this sounds like an extremely time consuming and
inefficient strategy to protect the U.S. from terrorism.
The
second controversial topic is under Section 215, where 'Sneak and Peek'
warrants allow federal law enforcement agencies to conduct secret searches, and
sometimes seize private property in American's homes and offices without giving
previous notice. Also, agencies can delay notifying the person that they have
been searched, or never even tell them at all.
(Surveillance Under the Patriot Act). This method of sneaking
onto a citizen’s privacy also violates the Fourth Amendment of privacy
protection and search warrants. Also, this provision doesn’t appear to be very
efficient when it comes to fighting terrorism. According to the American Civil
Liberties Union, “Of the 3,970 Sneak & Peeks in 2010, 76 percent were drug
related, 24 percent were other, and less than 1 percent were terror-related”
(Surveillance Under the Patriot Act). This shows how inefficient and
intrusive the “Sneak and Peek” warrants really are. These warrants are doing
very little to protect U.S. inhabitants.
In addition to violating the Fourth Amendment,
from failing to provide previous notice, provision 215 also violates the First
Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. Tim Lynch further explains this violation
by saying; “To top it all off, Section 215 has a gag provision that
criminalizes speech about 215 orders. So if the CEO of a telecommunications
firm finds that his company is spending a million dollars a year to comply with
Section 215 orders and wants to complain to Congress, he better not make that
call or send that letter” (Lynch, Tim). Not only can the FBI spy on you,
secretly enter your house and possibly steal private property, but if you find
out that this has been done, you cannot tell a soul. As you can see, this gag
provision influences corruption, and gives the FBI way too much power over
citizens and companies alike.
One
case that demonstrates the unconstitutionality of ‘Sneak and Peek’ warrants
occurred in 2004 between attorney Brandon Mayfield vs. United States of
America. Mayfield was wrongly accused in an international terrorism case where
his supposed ‘fingerprint’ was found on some evidence relating to a Madrid
train bombing. It ended up not being his fingerprint, but he we was secretly
surveyed through the use of ‘sneak and peek’ warrants anyway and unlawfully
arrested. Hundreds of personal photos were seized from his home and cameras
were placed all over his house as well. Mayfield claimed that portions of the
Patriot Act are unconstitutional because the statues permits these types of
searches without probably cause and it was wrong for him to be arrested. The
Supreme Court sided with Mayfield in this case and he was given a $2 million
settlement from the government for his mistaken arrest (Eggen, Dan). This is an
example of the abuse of power that the Patriot Act permits. Brandon Mayfield is
a Muslim American and I believe authorities were racist in their accusations of
him. He was targeted because of race, and authorities possibly believed he had
some connection to Al Qaeda, which is profiling and unethical to assume.
Similarly,
the government expanded its ability to access anyone’s personal records under
the Patriot Act. Section 215 of the
Patriot Act allows the FBI to force anyone at all- including universities,
doctors, libraries, etc to turn over their records on their clients and
customers. Any citizen’s information is freely given to the FBI whenever they
deem it necessary. All the government needs to do gain access is make a broad
assertion that the request is related to a terrorist or foreign intelligence investigation
(Reform the Patriot Act). From a
financial records standpoint, Tim Lynch states, “Financial privacy is
essentially gone. The feds have turned banks, brokerage houses, insurers and
other financial institutions into state informers. Those firms must notify the
Treasury Department about "suspicious" transactions, and the
government can subpoena your checking-account records even if there is no
evidence of wrongdoing” (Lynch, Tim). Something the FBI might find suspicious
could be anything such as: large transactions, their frequency, pattern, or
their destination or source. Again, the FBI only needs to say that the
information they discovered is somehow tied to terrorist related activity in
order to gain access. This is ludicrous. Giving the government this type of
‘free reign’ over our information is unnecessary, intrusive, and wrong.
Nevertheless,
some believe that the Patriot Act helps protect the country by monitoring
information to prevent future terrorist attacks. Although, many civil liberties are sacrificed,
the more records the government searches, the more likely they will catch some
sort of illegal activity. Many times these crimes are not terrorism related,
but that doesn’t mean they divulge useful information. Relating the quote
previously mentioned, according to ACLU, 76 percent of the “Sneak and Peeks”
was drug related. The Patriot Act contributes to fighting America’s current war
on drugs, curbs organized crime, and tracks kidnappers. The Act gives law
enforcement another tool in fighting these sorts of crimes, which are serious
issues for America as well (Messerli, Joe). Even if the Act was not created for
these purposes specifically, it contributes to help catch the ‘bad guys’ in the
United States. On the one hand, I agree that the Patriot Act helps fight the
war on drugs. But on the other hand, I still insist that these discoverings are
not worth the loss of so many civil liberties.
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| Sneak and Peak Warrants in 2010 |
Although debate over the Patriot Act may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial to America because we will be battling these threats on liberties until 2015. On May 26, 2011, Congress passed a four-year extension of these Patriot Act provisions without making much change to them at all. This type of power poses a threat to the pure existence of our country going back to our roots. Former Supreme Court Justice Brandeis claims, “ The right to privacy is a person’s right to be left alone by the government…the right most valued by civilized men”. (Reform the Patriot Act). By taking away our basic freedoms that were given to us through the Constitution, we are essentially stripping the core values our country was created under.
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