"Expiration" of The Patriot Act

The Patriot Act was set to expire in June 1^st of 2015. However on June 2^nd President Obama reinstated key factors of the Patriot Act and established the USA Freedom Act. “The USA Freedom Act is a US law that restored in modified form several provisions of the Patriot Act”. The Freedom Act essentially ends the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans telephone records. His signature reinstalled three parts of the Patriot Act, including Section 215, which has been the most controversial. Section 215 of the Patriot Act “Allows the government to obtain a secret court order requiring third parties, such as telephone companies, to hand over any records or other “tangible thing” if deemed “relevant” to an international terrorism.” President Obama was quoted saying that, “These programs, they make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity.”

The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. With its ten-letter backronym (USAPATRIOT) expanded, the full title is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001".

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Patriot Act

Time to Acknowledge What is Going On, and Make a Change.

How is America a free country if someone can know relatively any and everything about who you are and what you do? I think it’s about time that we as an entire nation realize that we are not really as free as we think we are. Imagine for example if we had a president who believed that any act that they performed should be considered legal because of the single fact that they were president. Can you imagine the power that one person could have and hold over people? Just think if in the future we had a president that believed they in fact could do so. Some might say that this is impossible, but just think about our current nominations running for president right now.

On both republican and democratic sides the leaders, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, are in my opinion horrible candidates.  One is an absolute crook who should be inedited and arrested, and the other is trying to deport essentially everyone from the US that isn’t a white American. Imagine what is going to happen if one of them takes the oval office. The outcomes are crazy to think what could happen to our privacy rights.

This is why it is time for the entire nation to come together to have an extremely important discussion about how we can balance the protection of the American people while at the same exact time respect people’s privacy. As an American citizen we have constitutional rights that are given to us in order to protect our privacy. I for one don’t want to live in a world where I have to constantly worry about what I am doing in private, because someone could possibly be watching. We need to find a way that will maintain how the United States is a free society.

Its great to speak about freedom and how the US is the land of the free and home of the brave, but what is freedom now a days? My definition of freedom is the right to do what I want when I want without harming another person of course. If I want to email or text a someone personal information about my life then I should be able to do so knowing that the information wont be seen by anybody else but who I intended the receiver to be. That is what freedom and privacy should be.

President George Bush Signing of the Patriot Act

How Private are our Lives Actually?

There are terrorist organizations and groups that’s sole purpose is to attack the USA. There is no doubt that the US government is doing everything they can to protect the citizens from terrorist attacks. The debate however is about how can the government protect the American people without violating the Constitution and privacy rights that are bestowed upon every single US citizen. I believe that every person in the US understands or at least should learn to understand that technology is growing to become more and more intelligent and sophisticated everyday. This is why it is important that we as a whole nation start to begin a discussion on how we can protect our privacy rights with the growing technology. How can we protect our nation against both foreign and domestic attacks, while at the same time protect our constitutional freedom and privacy rights?

What is crazy to think is that the NSA and other government organizations have large amounts of information on every single person. People are learning that the government is collecting phone call information including who is calling each other, the location of both people, the time in which the call was made, and how long the phone call took place. That is just insane. Is there really any privacy at all anymore? You can’t do anything now a day without someone knows what you are doing. Text messages, Internet browsing, and emails can all be recorded. What is even crazier that I recently just discovered is that someone can pinpoint your location within a few feet using apps such as Google Maps.

There is without a doubt even more going on then what I have been able to learn. Local agencies, and governments I bet are also collecting information about the habits of people. Like in the UK for example, there are cameras everywhere that can take pictures of your license plate, yourself, and where you are going. The government can know where you are, where you are going, and how long it took you to get to your destination.

Even though I have been mainly focusing on the government and how what they have been doing is questionable, there are also private companies and organizations that are also collecting a plethora of information form people. They know an extremely large amount about what we do. These companies can know what we read, what we email, and even what websites we are visiting. And that is just what we think we know. There could be and infinite amount of information that they have about us that we have no idea about. This is how our privacy is being damaged. If someone can access your purchasing records, phone calls, emails, and even tract our location, then basically everything that someone does can be known.

Patriot Act Debates

Don’t get me wrong I am all for the USA Patriot Act and what it does to prevent terrorist attacks on our country. However there are some areas that I do not agree with. Mainly the fact of the amount of time the Government keeps our personal information. With our government being able to keep all over our online ISPs and search engine information I believe it is a direct violation of our personal privacy. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to access our information at all, I am just stating that I believe they should only be allowed to keep it for a shorter amount of time. The European Union for example does the exact same thing as our government does with ISPs and search engines, however the difference is that they only keep the information they gather for a month or two.

Along with our ISPs and search engine information, another big impact the Patriot Act has is on our personal cellphones. With the Patriot Act the NSA is able to access our call history, search history, message history, etc. from our cellphones. They’re even able to access repeated calls and at what time they were made. Senator Ron Wyden, who is a leading supporter of NSA reforms stated, “They can know, for example, whether an American called a psychiatrist three times in 36 hours, twice after midnight. That is a lot of private information.” I completely agree with is statement. By the government being able to access that much of our personal lives is kind of troublesome. The government keeps this information of from our cellphones for five years, yes five years, and has easy access to the storage of information. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a USA Freedom Act co-sponsor also brought up a good point when he said, “I think it’s unconstitutional, the courts have not held that. But I think this is exactly why the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent that.” Nadler, along with countless other would make the same argument. By having the NSA being able to access all of the information and then store it is arguably unconstitutional.

One of the biggest problems I have with the Patriot Act is how the NSA is able to petition the FISA court (a secret court) for a warrant that allows them to collect “any tangible” information in order to investigate terrorism or foreign spies. This warrant can make large companies, such as cellphone providers; give private information to the government. However in the Patriot Act it emphases on how the government can only obtain a warrant for information that is “relevant to an ongoing investigation against international terrorism.” Where in reality they can receive one of these warrants basically whenever they want.

What the Patriot Act actually stands for

The USA Patriot Act is actually a acronym standing for:
Uniting and
Strengthening
America by
Providing
Appropriate
Tools
Required to
Intercept and
Obstruct
Terrorism
The Patriot Act was in response to the terrorist attacks on the US World Trade Center on 9/11. The US Department of Defense established the USA Patriot Act on October 26, 2001.

Installment of The Homeland Security Act

https://youtu.be/3KlFc2-4Yyk

Topic Choice 1: If I Ruled the Internet

For my blog I have chosen the topic, If I Ruled the Internet. Within this blog I will be discussing the topic of the Governments regulation on the Internet, but more specifically on The United States Patriot Act. This act installed by the U.S. Government empowers government agents to sift through e-mails and Internet traffic logs to detect "patterns of terrorist activity." The issue that I have with this policy is how long the government is allowed to keep ISPs and search engines on file detailing our online activities. The U.S. government wants to keep them for years where as other government, such as The European Union, only keeps records for a month or two.