Assignment Task:
Respond to the following: Due to the United States 'unwanted actions' of Bin Laden and al Qaeda and their attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, the United States passed the USA Patriot Act. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001 (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The most substantial part of the act expanded surveillance tools utilized by law enforcement and intelligence agencies by reducing checks and balances (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The Patriot Act kept records of individual's internet search activities, allowed wiretaps without a court order, allowed search warrants without probable cause, trap and trace orders which allowed law enforcement access to individuals' outgoing and incoming call logs, and less stringent requirements for court orders and subpoenas (Taylor & Swanson, 2019).
The USA Patriot Act was reauthorized in 2006 by then-President Bush in March of 2006. The wiretap provisions were maintained but additional oversight was added to avoid abusing the provision and required judicial review and approval by the Director of the FBI or the NSA (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The original act also allowed law enforcement to 'sneak and peek' without a warrant or obtaining consent from the potential suspect, the reauthorization act limited this (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The Act was again reauthorized in 2011 and kept wiretaps. New provisions were added to the act that lowered the standard for a court to issue an order and the 'lone wolf" provision was extended, permitting the U.S. to surveil non-U.S. persons engaged in international terrorism (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The Freedom Act of 2015 was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama on June 2, 2015. The Act dissolved the provision which allowed the NSA the ability to "collect bulk data on individual American telephone records and Internet metadata" (Taylor & Swanson, 2019, p. 272).
Constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act: Concerns With the Legislation
While the USA Patriot Act was created to identify terrorists and potential acts against the United States, many believed that it violated its citizens' constitutional rights. The right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to unreasonable searches and seizures are some of the rights that the USA Patriot Act was accused of violating. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides its citizens with the freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). In the 2010 Supreme Court case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), the government believed the charity group HLP violated the material support clause of the USA Patriot Act and formally charged them (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). HLP is a group of human rights and peace activists that were advising a terrorist group, Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK) how to file human rights violations with the United Nations, and argued that the material support clause did not apply in this case as they were assisting with peace negotiations and not terrorist acts (Taylor & Swanson, 2019). The Supreme Court did not agree with HLP.
Biblical Perspective
The Bible says in Psalm 82: 4 that we must "Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked" (New Living Translation Bible, 1996/2003). This verse tells me that it is our duty as Christians to protect those who are unable to protect themselves and keep them away from those who have malintent. The fact that we have homegrown terrorists in our country tells us that we are failing to keep our citizens from the hands of the wicked. We must do all that we can to ensure that people are not easily manipulated into becoming matriarchs for a cause that is unfounded and based solely on hatred for a country that has different beliefs than their own.
References:
Life Application Study Bible, New Living Translation. (2003). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (Original work published 1996).
Taylor, R. W., & Swanson, C. R. (2019). Terrorism, intelligence, and homeland security (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson. ISBN: 9780134818146.