The Weaknesses Of The Patriot Act

The attacks on September 11, 2001 brought to light the many failures of our law enforcement and central intelligence community. In order to combat these issues the Government quickly enacted a bill to fix some of these issues. This new bill was called the Patriot Act. President George W. Bush signed it into law on October 26, 2001. It gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies many new tools and rules to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. Some of these new tools included making it easier to monitor phone conversations, ability to share intelligence, and it enhanced our border authority. It was passed almost unanimously at the time because people wanted to make sure something like this never happened again, but today it is …show more content…
They recognized that there were many inconveniences that agents would encounter if they sought to keep tabs on them. One thing terrorists could do to stay ahead of law enforcement would be to change their communication devices on a regular basis. They were taught this because every time they changed their device, agents would have to go get another search warrant to monitor their communications. Section 209 of the Patriot Act allows for what it called “Roving Surveillance”. This allowed agents to monitor the individual more than the device they were using. If the suspect would change out his cell phone this new law allowed agents to track this new device and any device they bought after that without obtaining a new search warrant every time. The Patriot Act also made it easier for law enforcement to obtain records from places like businesses or banks. In many cases there was not a whole lot of evidence to link an individual to a crime. So it was important to find out if they had gone to a store and bought materials to make a bomb. They might also want to get bank records and find out if a person had made contributions to a terrorist organization. Section 215 increases the types of records that can be obtained in a search warrant and also the different businesses that could be …show more content…
Many people sight the 4th amendment to the United States constitution when arguing about the Patriot Act. The 4th amendment protects the, “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Many cities and towns, even a couple states, have passed bills protesting the Patriot Act and they call for it to be repealed. People have all sorts of problems with the Patriot Act because they believe the government is spying on them. Whether these claims have any truth behind them nobody knows, but here are a couple of the most scrutinized parts of the Patriot Act. Probably one of the biggest issues is the sneak and peek section I mentioned earlier. It was put in place to find out information about terrorists, but people believe it is rarely used during terrorist investigation. They believe they use it in regular investigations, which they believe shouldn’t be allowed because that is not why the law was created. Equally as disputed is the government’s ability to use wiretaps because people believe the government is abusing this power and spying on