War on Terrorism & Privacy



War on Terrorism & Privacy

Introduction

Terrorism has become a very hot topic in the past few years. Terrorism was brought to the public eye on September 11, 2001 when four airplanes were hijacked and used as bombs, crashing into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon (Kisangani, 2007). In the wake of 9/11, on October 26, 2001, President Bush signed an anti-terrorism bill known as the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act provides the federal agencies with greater authority to track and intercept communications to combat Terrorism. When the President signed the Patriot Act, the War on Terror became easier to fight and it became easier to prevent future attacks on American troops, at home and abroad. The Patriot Act has had a great effect on the prevention of Terrorism ever since the bill has been passed. But it has a negative impact on people privacy or in the other words it can be said that it threatens people's privacy(Rodin, 2006).

Discussion

After the terrorism attacks governments all over the world try to establish different law to prevent these types of attacks. These laws are helpful but meanwhile they can be taken as a threat for the privacy.

The Patriot Ac can be considered as the best example.

The Patriot Act was the longest emergency legislation act passed in the shortest amount of time in American history. The Act was passed with three main goals. The first goal was to enhance government to government information sharing. To help achieve this goal, regulations were lifted that had kept the relations between federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities. The next goal was to allow government surveillance to move swiftly. Also, private businesses were encouraged to share important information with the government(www.gsas.harvard.edu). The government lifted legal liability to ...