USA Patriot Act: Intimidating Your Civil Liberties?

Many United States citizens and politicians support the USA Patriot Act and its provisions. The Attorney General John Ashcroft states that the “law enforcements ability to prevent another attack on American soil would be more difficult, if not impossible, without the Patriot Act” (Swartz 1). Due to the devastating events which took place on

September 11th, the USA Patriot Act

In order to combat terrorism the USA Patriot Act was “grounded in good intentions” and “contained some needed response to address the issues facing law enforcement in our technological age”. The provisions in which it maintains should be “subject to comprehensive review and debate” because of the importance of an individual’s civil liberties (USA Patriot Act: Too Much 1-2).

The USA Patriot Act was just the first step. Attorney General John Ashcroft has proposed yet another Domestic Security Enhancement Act which contains more law enforcement powers, but many of these are “unrelated to terrorism.” Karen Ann Gajewski writes about this new act that is referred to as the “Patriot II.” The Patriot II will “further threaten civil liberties” by allow the government to “spy” on activities protected by the constitution, share private information with local and state law enforcement, access credit reports without consent, and allow “sampling and cataloguing of innocent American’s genetic information without their consent or a court order” (1).

was “passed quickly and without significant debate”

The goal of the USA Patriot Act is to “target various monetary transactions and electronic communications that may reflect terrorist activities.” Furthermore, the USA Patriot Act influences financial institutions to “obtain additional, verifiable information about their customers.” Other provisions of the act are “buried” within the act, so many individuals may not be familiar with each and every provision (Hockeimer Jr. 1).

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