Term Paper on "Private Security and Patriot Act. The U"

Term Paper 7 pages (2849 words) Sources: 7 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Private Security and Patriot Act. The U.S. Patriot Act of 2001 which was enacted on October 26, 2001, came to be regarded as an important source in the U.S.'s fight against terrorism. Being quickly made into a law in the wake of the 9/11 incident, Congress beefed up the capabilities of the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities to fight terrorism on several spheres. The Patriot Act brought about radical changes to a lot of important areas of law. At the core of the Fourth Amendment lies the liberty from needless investigations and arrests. (Lee, 2003) However against this, the Patriot Act widens significantly the extent of government's powers as regards confinement of non-citizens for an indefinite period and to undertake searches, arrests, and scrutiny with lower levels of reason and stages of judicial review, amongst added requirements. (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia Advisory Committees to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003) Through augmenting the government's capability to undertake searches, this wide ranging act has been debated to have equivalent inferences for privacy safeguards which have come under greater public investigations in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorists attacks. (Wong, 2002)

Among the severe criticisms subsequent to the September 11 incidents was that the U.S. intelligence was unsuccessful in their endeavor to beef up their knowledge and mutually collaborate in order to avoid the attacks. The Patriot Act dealt with this matter and section 218 of the Patriot Act modified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - FISA to enable more and more collaboration among agents regarding foreign attacks and investigators indicting foreign terrorists -a link that has been prohibited by the administrative and legal interpretations of the FISA. (Dinh, 2004) Investigation and arrest limitations were considered to be the primary reasons of the FBI's popular failure to look for a warrant during the weeks prior to the September 11 to investigate the computer and other belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected "20th hijacker." (Taylor, 2003) Zacarias Moussaoui had been put under confinement since August 16, in principle for extending his Visa on the basis of information regarding his queer attitude at a Minnesota flight school. The FBI possessed enough grounds to doubt that Moussaoui who has been enrolled as an associate of Al-Qaida was a dreadful Islamic terrorist engineering acts of terrorism on airlines. (Taylor, 2003)

The Department of Justice takes the stand that grand juries have long had the authority to subpoena bookstore as well as library documents, and that the Patriot Act just extended that control to anti-terror and foreign intelligence investigations. According to Lee Tien- a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation at San Francisco stated how simpler it has become to make use of FISA surveillance in an inquiry for a law-enforcement function after the initiation of the Patriot Act. (Murray, 2003) Just a few of the general law-enforcement probing methods had much scope of breaking and defanging outfits similar to the Al-Qaida. The four most valuable acts are: smuggling them by means of informers and undercover agents; locating them and knowing their arrangements by means of observation, searches, and cable-tapping, arresting them prior to their unleashing acts of terrorism; and questioning those who have been arrested. Everything with the sole exception of the first were so securely controlled by the Supreme Court models, laws, and other organizational policies as to severely obstruct investigations by the terrorists. The Patriot Act gave greater flexibility and utility to these powers while concurrently setting limits to lower excessive use and misuse. (Taylor, 2003)

The USA Patriot Act running into 342 pages therefore amended a lot of present laws to: extend the potentiality to get warrants and undertake investigations in the absence of revealing them instantly, extend collection of DNA to cover any severe crime, mandate availability to "business records" that cover library and files at the bookshops, prevent lawsuits to keep from ruining airlines whose aircrafts were being hijacked. (Murray, 2003) the Act allows the FBI to get a court order necessitating the production of not simply 'records' but "any tangible articles inclusive of books, records, papers, documents, and other things required for a search to safeguard against global terrorism or secret intelligence acts. In the past FISA Section 501 (50) exclusively were related to records of common carriers, public accommodation amenities, physical storage amenities, and vehicle rental amenities. Through extension of the scope, Congress has presently placed the computer servers, data and other property of ISPs and other telecom units within extensive availability of legal enforcement agents. The Patriot Act sanctions legal enforcement to have the capability to undertake covert searches; get classified personal data; search emails and Internet usage, and circumvent the Fourth Amendment's possible cause need. Besides, federal agents are able to implement these powers with least Congress and judicial oversight. (Lee, 2003)

The Patriot Act's probable impact on the providers and telecom service users inclusive of wireless phones, email and the Internet is unbelievably wide. Besides, law enforcement agencies anticipate augmenting their interception and checking of electronic communications. Especially, the Patriot Act permits for increased law enforcement access to ISP and business records of cable companies and data of subscribers, as also voicemail messages and personal communications property like home PC. Indeed the chances of wiretapping, for instance, is hoped to grow ten times. By now, a lot of telecommunication carriers have converted customer records to legal enforcement agents. Similarly, anxiety regarding wrongful use of the law has begun to come to the forefront. (Lee, 2003) Classified information regarding U.S. citizens received through grand jury investigations and wiretaps can be revealed before the intelligence agencies in the absence of judicial review under the U.S.A. Patriot Act. It is the "Sneak and Peak" warrants that allow government agencies to undertake investigations by not speaking about the topic, hence one cannot claim one's due process and Fourth Amendment privileges. The law renders it simpler to force private parties to publish records, inclusive of student records and information regarding personal finance and the government possesses wide ranging control to scrutinize Internet usage. Significant judicial review is not existent on a lot of provisions of this law. (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia Advisory Committees to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003)

Libertarians show that the majority of the conversations eavesdropped and email seized in the fight against terrorism will not be guilty and that the tappers and buggers would overhear intimate conversations and discomforting revelations which are not of any government's lookout. These types of concerns makes argument for widening wiretapping and surveillance powers just as much it appears to counter acts of terrorism. (Taylor, 2003) a specific issue remains that the person whose details are investigated does not have to be an agent of a foreign administration. The citizens of United States can possibly be examined regarding acts associating them to an inquiry of international terrorism, taking care that the inquiry is not undertaken exclusively on the basis of activities safeguarded by the First Amendment to the Constitution. This section has its concern in other manners as well. For instance, judges do not possess any power to refute a request in case the application fulfills the needs of this section. It is not mandatory to state the actual records detained or regarding their utility to the court or that of the Congress. Although the Section 215(e) does not ignore any rights, individuals given any order are stifled. Besides, the Act supersedes federal privacy laws and openly prohibits giving information to the person whose records have been revealed. People will not be having knowledge if the government is adopting inequitable means to probe into their deeply private affairs. (Lee, 2003)

Further, the Attorney General has been given independent power under the Patriot Act to arrest and detain foreigners on his own orders, in the absence of any trial or scope for the foreigner to answer to the charges. The Attorney General has the powers to arrest any settlers whom he testifies as a "suspected terrorist." "Suspected Terrorists" has been defined so extensively that it covers almost every settler who has been involved in a barroom scuffle or household clashes, as also foreigners who have not done any violent activities in their lives, and whose only fault is extending humanitarian assistance in favor of an organization that does not enjoy support from the government. In come cases, the law gives approval to the Attorney General to detain such persons for ever. This stipulation infringes the most fundamental elements of due procedures. It sanctions preventive detention of individuals who cause no threat to the community or danger of flight. It sanctions arrest in the absence of any notice or hearing. The Justice Department has unleashed extensive preventive arrest crusade, arresting people in mass scale since 9/11; almost all immigrants among them. (Cole, 2002)

Several changes in law made by the Attorney General Ashcroft have even more startling revelations compared to the provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Individuals are isolated, particularly at the airports… READ MORE

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