The Patriot Act

Kerrie Jones

A.p. Lang. & Comp.

Pd. 3(G)

The Patriot Act

"After 9/11, people were very frightened and upset about what had happened but now they are recognizing that safety and constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive " (FBI needs to reel in). This is probably how they felt when they created the patriot act that they had to do something. They had to do something to find the terrorists so that everyone would be safe. The government's methods of accomplishing their goals were not constitutional and they took away liberty and freedom that should be available to everyone. The question is how far and how is the government going to get what they want. It depends if they want to go the lengths of targeting certain races or even going to the length of violating the amendments or trying to stretch the rules of the amendments.

One thing that could be troublesome is having citizens not know what is going on. Entail in the patriot act says that "the FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday" (Jordan). The police also look into "records about identify thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials. In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists" (Jordan). There are dome good things about what they are doing. This will definitely help find the terrorists.

Also there are some things that most of the time makes matters worse. Things that go against everything we've worked for and every thing we have achieved.

"Under the act, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors were given a bundle of

new tools, from a revamped intelligence- sharing system and taft of anti-money

laundering powers to roving, single wiretaps that make it easier to continually

track terrorism suspect who use networks of cell phones. But the new law also

gave the feds a virtually freehand to secretly rummage through the records and

homes of ordinary Americans, even those with no ties to suspect terrorists or

spies" (Halloran).

Another example of this is " Ð''National security letters.' The FBI can use to secretly obtain an individual's phone, banking and Internet records, so long as the secrecy is essential to counter terrorism efforts" (FBI needs to reel in). The question is how far is too far, how far are they going to go to catch the terrorists. Are they going to violate liberties, freedom, or the amendments that we have pit into place? Are they going to go to the extent of targeting certain people because of their skin color, for instance dark-skinned people? They need to know that "in a war of shadows and whispers, anyone can be an enemy"