What Is a Patriot Act - Case Study Example

Patriot Act Introduction With many acts of terrorism reported, there has been a need to improve the security of the Americans. The patriotic act is one of the US laws put in place to combat terrorism. This law was put in place in the wake of the September 11, 2000 terrorism. The act was meant to improve the domestic security and strengthen and broaden the powers of the law enforcement agencies (Greenwald, 2006). However, the passing of the law has been received with a lot of controversial especially in regard to the issue of its authorization of surveillance and search and seizure. While supporters of the law claims that the law is meant to aid the investigations and arrests of terrorists, its opponents argue that although the law was meant to improve security in the US, it has bestowed the government with too much power that threatens the civil rights and puts democracy at trial. Ethicality of the Patriotic Act The first account that faces the controversy of the Act involves they way in which the law was passed. The law was passed very quickly, barely one month after the September 11th terror attack. The deliberation of the provision of the act was done in less than 48 hours. This brings in the issue of whether the law was well discussed and evaluated before being passed by the congress. For any Act to be passed into law there is a need to have a comprehensive review of its impact and implication. The law has to be in line with other laws taking consideration of the possibility of contradicting other laws. For instance, the law gives powers to homeland security in regard to surveillance and search and seizure in its operations. However, this tends to contradict several civil liberties enjoyed in the country and which are guaranteed by the constitution. For instance, although the Patriotic Act allows the law enforcement the power to surveillance, search and seizure, the law seems to undermine the right to privacy. Although the constitution does not spell out on the issue of privacy, many Supreme Court decisions have supported the right to privacy. In addition, the power to invade ones premise to search without notification is seen as violation of people’s right to privacy (Greenwald, 2006). In another dimension, the law has also been viewed as an avenue to achieve other hidden agendas by the law enforcement agencies. For instance, instead of the law enforces invading suspects’ homes just for the search of terrorism activities, the law enforcers can take advantage and use the law to achieve their own personal goals. Additionally, it has been argued that the law does not have any provision of the measures to be taken on the law enforcers that could be found misusing the law. In case of such stipulations, the Patriotic Act only relies on other laws to deal with any cases of its misuse. In the past, the law has been argued to be misused by the law enforcers for search of drug rings and evicting homeless people from train stations. In Las Vegas, the law has been used to collect financial data from people that visit the state (Ball, 2004). Such acts can be used for other hidden agendas. For instance, collection of financial data from strangers can lead to financial crimes when people can lose their money through dubious acts. Issues of kidnapping have been connected to the financial information that the kidnapers have. In addition, with the increase in technology, it is apparent that some financial information can be used to steal money from the citizens. Some people have also argued that the patriotic Act only works on the theory in regard to terror threats. The striking balance has been contentious between security and civil liberties. The Patriotic Act has been considered to erode citizen’s civil liberties on the basis of the way searches are carried out. The law enforces are given the go ahead for search by a secret court. This has been argued to be unlawful because such searches require open procedure where the searches requests require to be executed by an open court with clear checks and balances (Smith & Hung, 2009). Therefore, the process of executing the Act has been questionable because of failure to follow the due process including the required scrutiny and oversight. The review of the Act has only been referred to the justice department instead of inviting disinterested and unbiased party for review. In this regard, it has been argued that the law can never meet the expectations of the American people since they have not been given an opportunity to review it. The argument that there have only been minor cases of the abuse of the Patriotic Act has been considered as unjustifiable and cannot be used as a review of the Act. The secrecy revolving the execution of the Act has been seen as a way of blocking any meaningful review of the Act. The oversight responsibility has been argued to be executed by another branch, but not the government that authorize its secretive execution (Greenwald, 2006). The Patriotic Act also allows the security agencies to bypass some constitution’s prevision in regard to search warrant. In addition, the Act has been criticized because of its stipulation in regard to allowing determination to be made based on individual’s beliefs or speech (Smith & Hung, 2009). In light of this, this has been argued to deny freedom of speech. For instance, there are different views about how the issue of terrorism should be handled. People might have different and contracting ideas on how the issue can be handled. In some instances, people might be misquoted and accused of support of terrorism. Therefore, the Act is seen to violate constitutional provisions where freedom of speech is guaranteed. This is worsened by the fact that the investigations carried out by the support of the Act is done in secret ways thus leaving out the main point of people’s defense. The unconstitutionality of the Patriotic Act has also been argued to violate the Americans rights since there has not been any war between the government and the Americans. Therefore, allowing the government to invade Americans in the name of fighting terrorism has been faced with strong objection from the Americans (Greenwald, 2006). The Act also gives the president the powers to use force against persons he determines fosters or support act of terror. Without any normal court processes that allow people to be searched, the president can decide on individuals and organisations to be put under surveillance. With such deliberations, people have argued that it is unethical for the executive to possess excessive powers. The citizens have been bestowed with the power to decide on the matters pertaining how they are governed by the executive (Smith & Hung, 2009). Although the primary goal of the act was to fight terrorism, the way in which the whole process is executed raises questions of its ethicality. The congress has also been blamed for hurriedly passing the Act into law without taking a deep thought of its implications. Having been passed into law only a month after the September 11th terror attack, it is a clear that the congress was ambitious of fighting terrorism, but shunned away from articulating on the consequences of the Act especially on innocent citizens (Phelan, 2010). In another dimension, it has been argued that the law was passed in relation to the September attack and specifically stipulates that the president has powers to order search and arrests of persons believed to have committed the crime including those that aided or supported the terrorists. Therefore, this means that the point of concern was mostly on the events of the September attack and not on the future implications of the Act (Greenwald, 2006). The use of surveillance technology by the homeland security The two principles used by the homeland security is the airtight surveillance of terrorists and the increased speed in tracking down and intercepting terrorists. Anti-terrorist technologies include biometric devices and other surveillance networks. Therefore, the argument has been in regard to the use of these technologies on US visitors that are suspected to be terrorists or persons that aid terror attacks. In this regard, the ethicality of the use of technologies such as biometric devices has become contentious. For instance, some devices require to be inserted in the underneath of suspect’s skin. Health implication of the use of such devices is yet to be researched. In addition, this has also been argued to go against people’s freedom of movement. When such devices are used, it means that the suspect is always monitored (Roach, et al., 2005). This has been argued to be unethical especially when the devices are only put on people that are only considered as suspects. Since the Patriotic Act is executed in secretive ways, it means that some people could be under surveillance without their knowledge. This has also been considered as a way of encouraging racism and discrimination of some members of the society. For instance, since Patriotic Act gives the law enforcement agencies powers to search any suspect, the law can be misused especially where citizens become suspects based on their physical characteristics. For instance, people visitors of countries where terrorism is believed to originate can fall victims of the security operations (Greenwald, 2006). On the other hand, there have been arguments that the Act only serves the interest of people given power by it especially the executive since the public has nothing to contribute on the operations of the security agencies as directed by the executive. Conversely, since the law does not stipulates on how the technology products need to be used, it is apparent that this would end up jeopardizing the civil liberties of the citizens. Hidden services that come in line with the use of the products in the effort to fight terrorism raises a lot questions in regard to what constitute the undisclosed services. Corruption has also be cited to have been supported by the use of these products. Biomedical technologies have become more expensive especially depending on the intended purpose. Since the anti-terror operations need to be secretive, some of these products come in relatively small size. This means that the technology used is expensive in order to produce such products. Some of them require the support of GPRS. Therefore, some people might take advantage of this fact to make deals with companies manufacturing the product to have some monetary gains. The safety act has been argued to be ambiguous in the language used to explain the use of these technologies. Therefore, this has been considered as jeopardizing the safety of the US citizens. The manufacturers need to provide a clear report on the safety of the technologies they manufacture (Greenwald, 2006). This would ensure the citizens about the safety of the products to be used for anti-terror purposes. In addition, this has been argued to be one of the problems of the Patriotic Act, which create a room for secret operations that do not allow scrutiny of the act and operations fostered by the Act. Conclusion It is apparent that the Patriotic Act is meant for a good course of fighting against terrorism. However, deliberations on the way it was passed and the operations by the security agencies supported by the Act bring in a debate on ethicality of the Act. In particular, the homeland security has been in the spotlight in regard to the use of security surveillance technologies. The issue of infringing civil liberties has also been questionable. The search and surveillance of citizens without search warrants as stipulated by the constitution have been evidenced by the powers given by the act to the security agencies. In addition, the application of the surveillance technologies has been criticized for lack of clear articulation of the issue of the safety of the US citizens. References: Smith, S. & Hung, L. (2009). How does the homeland security use The PATRIOT Act in regard to its authorization of The Patriot Act: Issues and Controversies. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher, LTD. Greenwald, G. (2006). How Would a Patriot Act? New York: Working Assets Publishing. Roach, K et al. (2005). Global anti-terrorism law and policy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Pres Ball, H. (2004).The USA Patriot Act of 2001: balancing civil liberties and national security: a reference handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO Phelan, J. (2010). Patriot act. Sydney, N.S.W.: Read HowYouWant. Read More