 "Photo: MCT Campus")
 "Photo: MCT Campus")
The defining piece of post-9/11 legislation is the USA PATRIOT Act. The Act's title explains its purpose as, "To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools and for other purposes." Nice and specific.
The Patriot Act defines and addresses surveillance procedures, money laundering, border security, terrorism investigation, criminal law and improved intelligence and information sharing. This sounds like wonderful progress, but unfortunately, the Patriot Act's powers have been used and abused as a means to exert power and create fear in the minds of American citizens. Provisions of the Patriot Act are constantly being amended, changed and used to affect broader, less-defined goals than originally planned.
For example, some provisions of the Patriot Act were so flawed that during 2006, in some places around the country, the Act was used to clear out the homeless from city streets. In Las Vegas in 2003, the FBI used provisions of the Act to investigate a scandal involving the city's political figures. That's hardly the work of terrorists.
But those are just minor examples of the overreaching effects of this enormous law. Some of the effects are a lot closer to home.
For several years, the Love Library computer lab machines contained a notice informing users that, under a provision of the Patriot Act, all of the activity on the university computers could be monitored by the U.S. government and the user did not have to be informed. There's nothing quite like living in fear, knowing that the government could be watching your activity and possibly using your online activity against you.
This breach of rights can't be justified by saying, "Don't do anything online that you're not supposed to be doing." Citizens have a fundamental right to privacy, and not all private information or activity that you'd prefer the government does not see, is illegal. Assuming that some private activities are illegal activities is a dangerously flawed logic.
This particular provision was struck down almost a year ago in federal court, however power was wielded unabashedly for almost six years, leaving no way to trace its destruction of the privacy rights of American citizens. While the warrantless wiretaps are now history, their absence doesn't make the Patriot Act any better for the American public.
There are new problems created by provisions of the Act that must be tackled by the citizens of the United States. The National Security Letter provisions allow intelligence agencies to demand information about citizens from businesses or organizations with virtually no judicial oversight. The provisions also contain a gag order, which limits the organizations from even speaking about the subpoena.
The USA PATRIOT Act is meant to protect the citizens of the United States from terrorism. But under the current use of the law, it makes more sense for people to be afraid of their government than of the terrorists themselves. Especially in some places where the threat of terror is minimal, this Act is nothing more than a threat. It functions as little more than a "legal" way to destroy the freedoms that this country was founded on.
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