USA Patriot Act 2001 - Research Paper Example

Jim Sensenbrenner brought H.R. 3162 to the floor. The bill was passed on October 24, 2001 with the overwhelming support of both the Democrat and Republican parties. The nation's security enforcers such as the FBI and CIA seemed to be powerless to stop such a strong opponent from attacking America because, as then senator Joe Biden explained it (“The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty “, n.d.): “Many of the tools the Act provides to law enforcement to fight terrorism have been used for decades to fight organized crime and drug dealers, and have been reviewed and approved by the courts. As Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) explained during the floor debate about the Act, "the FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia, but they could not get one to investigate terrorists.

To put it bluntly, that was crazy! What's good for the mob should be good for terrorists." (Cong. Rec., 10/25/01)” At the time that the bill was passed into law, everything that it contained in terms of investigating and going after terrorists on American soil seemed to make sense. The country finally had a law that would force the law enforcement agencies to work as a team rather than independently of each other in an effort to bring terrorist activities to the front lines (Fritscher, 2007).

It gave them a legal method through which they could investigate and surveille suspected terrorists. It was actually because of the difficulties that the various government agencies experienced in investigating possible terrorist acts that this law came into being. By allowing the law to give our law enforcement officials the power and tools with which to conduct their investigations pertaining to perceived terrorist threats within the country, our lawmakers have made the country a safer place for all concerned to live in (Mathewson, 2009).

Under the law, the legal barriers that existed previously which prevented the government agencies from sharing intelligence with one another was removed. Thus allowing for a more collective effort in the fight against terrorist. This was because they now had the ability to see the over all picture of a terrorist plot using bits and pieces of collated information from various sources. To quote Sen. John Edwards (“The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty “, n.d.) : "we simply cannot prevail in the battle against terrorism if the right hand of our government has no idea what the left hand is doing". The U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 has the country's best interests at heart.

However, there are sectors of society that view the law as one that was haphazardly put together due to the jittery nerves that existed at the time. The law was passed with little to no debate in both legislative houses, and the more than three hundred and forty page document was passed with majority of congress never even having read a single page. All because of a perceived enemy that was little understood in the annals of American history (Point, n.d.). The problem with the law, is that it inadvertently approved investigatory tools that used to be denied by congress on the basis of domestic privacy issues (Point, n.d.).

While our constitution guarantees certain rights to privacy in Constitutional Amendments four to eight, the Patriot Act repeals such privacy assurances for its citizens in the name of national security. Instead, the act opens up the citizens of the land to various possible abuses in authority that did not exist before the passing of the US Patriot Act of 200