Patriot Act and Citizenry

Patriot Act and Citizenry

Introduction

The USA PATRIOT Act (acronymic the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) was established as an anti-terrorism legislation in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 200. This was a compel law, that received little Congressional debate, and was signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 26th, 2001. The Law strengthens the domestic mechanisms of the state to carry out anti-terrorism actions, by giving extensive surveillance and search authorities to local, law enforcing and intelligence agencies (Etzioni, 2004).

Discussion

In the U.S., it has significantly changed the laws interception, by extending their period of applicability and imposing constraints on their use in case of being less accurate. This law eliminated the controlling powers of the courts that previously, were responsible to oversee any deviation or misuse of force by the law-enforcers. This law was perceived to be a threat to the rights of millions of Americans. This law was an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act established in 1978 that increased the powers to U.S. authorities such as armed forces, FBI, CIA, NSA, to obtain confidential information form relevant sources in an attempt to combat any probable terrorist activities. Although it is not without safeguards, critics contend some of its provisions go too far (Foerstel, 2008). Although it grants many of the enhancements sought by the Department of Justice, others are concerned that it does not go far enough.

Patriot Act and a threat to Civil Liberty

The military can now arrest anyone who is believed to be associated with terrorism in any manner. And by anyone we mean, Canadian citizen, British citizen, French, South African, Australian, whomever. And let's not forget Americans. If this bill becomes law, the American military can arrest an American citizen for terrorism and hold them until a war against an enemy that is not clearly defined is won. Given that terrorism itself cannot be defeated until every as long as a single extremist of any group or ideology is alive and free, this effectively is a life sentence handed down without ever a trial to prove your innocence. In other words, this is the end of due process in any case in which the president feels you are a terrorist (Foerstel, 2008).

This bill, if it becomes law, sets precedence for ignoring due process. It continues the trend of destroying civil liberties in the name of national security. Setting aside for the time the civil liberties nightmare contained within Section 1031, let's look at Section 1032, the national security nightmare.

Section 1032 is entitled "REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY." In this section, the military would be required to have custody any person who is determined to be "(A) to be a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda; and (B) to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack ...