Anti-Terrorism Strategies Vs. Privacy and Civil Liberties

Anti-Terrorism Strategies vs. Privacy and Civil Liberties

The United States of America is the freest country in the world, yet privacy and civil liberties are increasingly being violated by government. To prevent future attacks like 9/11 from occurring, the federal government has dramatically tightened security and enforced investigation measures by passing an anti-terrorism legislation, the Patriot Act, on October 26th, 2001. These policies put American civil liberties and privacy at jeopardy and are utterly useless at eradicating terrorism. The government should not have the right to intrude on people's lives by using legislations such as the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act introduced legislative changes that enforced the government's surveillance and expanded its investigation rights, enabling it to access private information about anyone without their knowledge or consent. The U.S. government has manipulated thousands of people by using the Patriot Act this way. Thousands of telephone conversations have been eavesdropped upon, computers and Internet use have been monitored, and suspects have been detained without a valid cause. For instance, today most important messages are sent by electronic mail. The federal government has tried to limit our right to keep our electronic mail private. It has even suggested a Clipper Chip system by which it would detain access to all the information in all the computers within the U.S. Much of what the federal government does via the Patriot Act violates what is written about privacy in the Constitution (amendments 4 and 5) and in the Privacy Act of 1974. "The American Constitution was designed to direct, limit, and constrain the use of power in order to protect liberty. But as the founders knew, and as has become even clearer in modern times, liberty can be threatened by well-meaning people who seek only to do good." (Cato Institute, Cato Handbook for Congress, 2004).

The goal of the Patriot Act is to prevent and ultimately to eradicate terrorism from the United States. However, it is too often used in investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism. The Patriot Act has resulted in multiple arrests of innocent individuals. Many of these people have been detained based on their religious beliefs or ethnic and cultural background - others, for simply having repeatedly browsed websites belonging to the Muslim network.