The Patriot Act
Joey Simon
What is it?
Here is what the DOJ has to say about it...
The basic way of putting it is
"The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. Its title is a ten-letter backronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001".
What exactly does that mean for you the average everyday citizen?
It has a couple key points:
Surveillance
- Title 2 of the Act governs the capture and tracking of suspected terrorists' communications within the US, making a variety of email and phone surveillance techniques used against a suspect more easily authorized.
- Reduce or eliminate warrant requirements for gathering certain communications records and stored emails.
- Increased the scope of subpoenas for electronic communication records, seizing voicemail messages, nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence, and creating a greater ability to share criminal investigative information amongst law enforcement.
Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
- Modifies the rules on record searches so that third-party holders of financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent so long as the government says it is doing so to protect against terrorism.
- This means they don't even have to suspect you are a terrorist to access your records, just so long as it is related to protection against terrorism.
What does the media have to say?
Fox
Fox generally accepted that and supported the president when he enacted the Act. There were some Republicans that were against it and said it was unconstitutional.
But recently in the past few years they have changed there view to opposing it saying it goes against the freedoms of the people.
Here is an Article
CNN
The more liberal media source CNN was completely against it. Normally they are all in for more government involvement but this act they believed was unconstitutional and hurt the people.
They continue to follow the same ideals.
Here is an Article.
Right Wing
The Right wing usually is very against intrusive government policy but they were for this act at first because of the fact that it is for national defense but it seems that people believe that the government is using the act the wrong way and is spying on the people.
Always showed what good it was doing
Left Wing
The left wing is all for government to be part of there lives but they see this as completely going against the human rights we are given as citizens of the US.
They always made it seem like a bad thing
Criticism
The main, and if not only, criticism is the Historical effect because of the acts of terror in 2001 everyone got scared and wanted a way to combat an unknown enemy.
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