The Senate and House of Representatives voted recently to extend the Patriot Act for another 10 months pending President Obama’s signature. This move will continue part of the controversial law’s provisions, which many feel is a way for government to violate personal liberties and freedoms.
Congress—with an 86-12 vote in the Senate and a 279-143 vote in the House—voted on two provisions in the law.
The first is the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created a Director of National Intelligence, who is supposed make intelligence more cohesive by bringing different agencies together.
The Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, authorizes wiretaps in individuals for 30 days.
The Patriot Act was passed in reaction to the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001. The initial intent was good, but parts of the law were simply created to sound the nightmare of “big brother” becoming a reality. There is a nationwide understanding that national security and measures to ensure it are of the utmost importance, but at what cost? Where is the line drawn between being safe and losing basic rights and freedoms?
Some parts of the law, like strengthening enforcement against methamphetamine production, are understandable, but how is it balanced against allowing the FBI to wiretap citizens who may have been using certain words they deemed suspicious?
This is the most disturbing part of the law, as it means that the government—yes the government—can simply listen to your conversation because you “seem” suspicious.
While people who support such measures may argue that it is in the best interest of national security, the question of how basic rights protected under the constitution are supposed to become like a bartered commodity on the altar of national security still looms.
Why can a judge and a few other people make a decision to be on some techies’ tail and follow me because I may be Middle Eastern and may have said something about some people who are suspected of terrorism?
The permission that these laws give the government is like a scene from the HBO series The Wire. Although The Wire may be tame in comparison, the point is that there was some evidence before the wiretaps were made. This may not be a strong requirement in the reauthorized versions of the law. This should be disturbing to most Americans who love and cherish their civil liberties.
There is the understanding that yes, we live in different world than that of Sept.10, 2001, but should that mean a different America? Should the fact that attacks that were mounted on American soil so compel us to give up something we export to the rest of the world as unalienable rights and freedoms? If we agree with our founding founders, we have certain unalienable rights as human beings. Many things in life are trade-offs, but I cannot believe that our civil liberties are part of those things. The idea of an America in which information is no longer voluntarily shared—but could be taken covertly and secretly—should scare people.
This is not the America that our founding fathers envisioned, and we should work hard to protect those civil liberties before we begin to resemble an Orwellian novel.
