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.