Response one PADM-07
The USA Patriot Act of 2001 aims at eradicating terrorism and details methods that can be used to ensure America is safe from such acts. This focus on fighting terrorism came after the New York bombings in 2001 that left many dead and changed the country's course of history.
Through analyzing areas such as money laundering that finances terrorism internationally the American Intelligence has been able to drastically reduce the chances of a terrorist attack. This paper will, therefore, discuss the effects of the Patriot Act and how it influenced the passing of the Freedom Act.
The Act was made with good intentions to safeguard the American citizens but has had some disadvantages as well. It has been beneficial in helping the security officials in intercepting many people and some even got convicted especially after the 2001 terrorist's attacks. Procedures such as surveillance and strict regulations implemented under the Act have made it harder for a potential terrorist to succeed.
Security officials such as The FBI were under the Patriot Act allowed to have access to the phones of suspected individuals and other citizens (Boykin, 2015). The government was able to increase investments on security and communication within the nation that allowed them to be more aware of what was going on.
On the downside, there was the invasion of privacy through tapping of phones. Majority of American citizens highly criticized this act of invasion where they felt that some security agents can misuse the information they get to set others up (Boykin, 2015). This lack of privacy and tapping by the government can probably be described as the biggest disadvantage of the Patriot Act that in some ways violates certain freedoms of the citizens.
The intelligence agencies under this Act were permitted to have access to any records whether an organization or person who was deemed suspect (Boykin, 2015). They could dig up almost anything on them even information that was not necessarily relevant to the case. Racial profiling was also a big disadvantage of this that allowed suspected immigrants to be detained for long periods of time which has not been always done fairly. This is especially on tourist and immigrants trying to attain the American dream and profiling goes against their rights.
The Freedom Act of 2015 that was proposed in 2013 was meant to block the security officials from tapping Americans phone calls every day (Newman, 2015). Under the Patriot Act the intelligence official could get access to phone calls or even business records when it was deemed relevant to an investigation.
The intelligence security officials who insisted to the congress that having access to the citizen's phone logs and all other organizations allowed them to create links and stop attacks from happening on American soil fell in deaf years as the freedom act was passed to reduce their access to the citizens. Under the Freedom Act the Patriot Act was to be constrained. This therefore means that the National security agency could now only get access to the one person's information that they are looking for and they must first show how this person is associated with a terrorist group.
Therefore, phone call tapping of every citizen was stopped and only suspects are tapped. This Act also requires the intelligence community to show how much information they are collecting and will be beneficial in allowing technology companies to show how often they send information to the security people (Newman, 2015). This Freedom Act was beneficial and important in helping Americans citizens feel more private.
We can see the impact of the Patriot Act that helped change the intelligence sector all in the hopes of ensuring that terrorist do not attract. The Patriot Act has been useful in keeping the security officials aware of any suspicious people in the country but has also been criticized for invading in the privacy of Americans by tapping their phones. This problem was solved by the Freedom Act of 2015 that helps safeguard the personal information of innocent civilians and help in the crackdown on suspected terrorists.