Patronage

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the New York City World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Congress, at the urging of the Bush administration, overwhelmingly passed legislation known as the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. The act, standing for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," was primarily intended to provide law enforcement agencies with a legally-defined mandate to preempt and respond to real and potential terrorist threats against the United States. However, since passage of the Patriot Act, opposition from every part of the political spectrum -- from extreme Leftists to ardent libertarians -- have voiced serious complaints over the nature and scope of these 340 pages of new law. To date, some 165 communities around the country have passed resolutions either condemning the Patriot Act or seeking to restrict its application. While many of the accusations lodged against the act are, in the words of the Justice Department's Mark Corallo, illustrative of some Americans' "incredible ignorance of federal law," other objections may not be so far off the mark. According to the Justice Department's recent inspector general's report to Congress, 34 credible complaints, of the more than 1,000 complaints received, of civil rights and civil liberties intrusions were reported in the six-month period ending June 15. While most of the complaints were lodged against the Department of justice Bureau of Prisons concerning the treatment of Arab and Muslim detainees, the inspector general's report also lists credible complaints registered against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As such incidents demonstrate, one of the major shortfalls of the USA Patriot Act is its substantial dependency on its enforcers, namely federal law enforcement agencies, to police themselves in the law's application. Such is often the case in the enforcement of law with respect to the civil rights of citizens. It is true: the more intrusive the means of law enforcement, the greater protection a given society has against criminal activity in general and terror-related activities in particular. The question, of course, is at what price this