Usa Patriot Act Essay

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USA PATRIOT Act
The USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law by Congress and the president at the time, George W. Bush, on October 26, 2011. It was voted in the Senate 98-1 and the House of Representatives agreed 357-66 to pass the law. The ten letter backronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Protecting Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The Congress was able to create this Act within a short period of time because they “took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network” ("Preserving Life and Liberty"). "The Patriot Act defines "domestic terrorism" as activities within the United States that . . . involve acts dangerous …show more content…
. . appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. . . ." ("The Patriot Act"). These are a few significant ways in which the Act has improved the war on counter-terrorism: allows investigators the use of tools previously used on organized crime and drug trafficking to be applied to the fight against terrorism, facilitates information allocation and cooperation between agencies, modernizes the law to reflect the advanced technology and new threats, increases the penalties for those convicted of terrorist activities and crimes ("Preserving Life and Liberty"), and strengthens United States’ measures to prevent, detect and prosecute international money laundering and financing of terroristic

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