Homeland Security has a difficult role of protecting the lives of Americans and protecting their privacy. This balance fluctuates with time and events: when a catastrophic event like 9/11 happens versus ten years have passed without an “incident”. Americans are whirl winded and are not given enough information to be informed and, for the most part, decided to give up a lot of their rights to “insure this does not happen again” but when does the rights of privacy return? Our Civil rights are given to us by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. There are four in particular that are most important to us as citizens: 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th. The first amendment protects us against persecution from the government against what we decide to say/write,
…show more content…
This act was widely accepted in a knee-jerk response to the September terrorism the month before. We, as Americans, were angry, insecure, afraid, and wanted things done quickly. Our Civil Rights went down as our safety went up. This act allowed law enforcement to use surveillance against more crimes of terror, federal agents to follow sophisticated terrorists trained to evade detection. Basically this act gave law enforcement more room to delve in further, though they still needed court orders. The PATRIOT Act also created an FBI-generated National Security Letter (NSL). The FBI could now demand information from many public and private institutions simply by asking for it in an NSL. The Act also updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats. This meant to increase the government’s ability to gather electronic information and giving them the right to seize financial records, records on foreign students, and material when it believed national security was believed to be jeopardized. What was interesting about this Act was that it actually had a a “Sunset” clause which mean it had an expiration date unless it was renewed; which is was in 2006 and then again in 2015 as the USA Freedom Act. We and the government, want to know who is coming and going, what people are saying that could possibly
This act was widely accepted in a knee-jerk response to the September terrorism the month before. We, as Americans, were angry, insecure, afraid, and wanted things done quickly. Our Civil Rights went down as our safety went up. This act allowed law enforcement to use surveillance against more crimes of terror, federal agents to follow sophisticated terrorists trained to evade detection. Basically this act gave law enforcement more room to delve in further, though they still needed court orders. The PATRIOT Act also created an FBI-generated National Security Letter (NSL). The FBI could now demand information from many public and private institutions simply by asking for it in an NSL. The Act also updated the law to reflect new technologies and new threats. This meant to increase the government’s ability to gather electronic information and giving them the right to seize financial records, records on foreign students, and material when it believed national security was believed to be jeopardized. What was interesting about this Act was that it actually had a a “Sunset” clause which mean it had an expiration date unless it was renewed; which is was in 2006 and then again in 2015 as the USA Freedom Act. We and the government, want to know who is coming and going, what people are saying that could possibly