The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, better known as the Patriot Act, was passed on October 26, 2001 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. This bill allowed for an increased ability to wiretap and trace American telephones, e-mails, medical, financial, and other records and weakened restrictions on law enforcement involving terrorism. In other words, if a law enforcement official felt terrorist activity was to potentially occur, he or she was permitted to do whatever possible to gather information about the potential risk. The Patriot Act was a bill eliminating all civil rights Americans used to have before its passing. This act should be abolished because of its destruction of civil liberties.
Certain parts of the act were relatively uncontroversial and quite reasonable because they did not sacrifice Americans' civil rights. This includes the permitting of the FBI and CIA to share information more freely and use "roving wiretaps" rather than those targeted strictly at specific telephone numbers. This making sense because we live in a day of disposable cell phones. Other stipulations, however, unjustifiably violate privacy rights. What's particularly troubling is the vagueness of the new capabilities of law enforcement. The bill allows for the acquisition of financial and other records by means of performing fishing expeditions. These fishing expeditions are searches that can go through anybody's personal records, including completely innocent citizens that aren't even suspected of terrorist activity in order to find information. The only restriction placed on these expeditions is that the expedition must be "relevant" to a terrorist search. The term "relevant" is an adjective that is very susceptible to interpretation. .
The main problem with the Patriot Act is its title.
