Recent Federal Acts and Social Justice

The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act of the 21st Century form the foundation of the United States’ domestic response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Many legal and political voices have advocated that these acts have resulted in a reduction in the rights of citizens and a loss of civil liberties. Many other legal and political voices argue that in this “new world of terror” we must have more effective ways of preventing terror attacks.

With these differing perspectives in mind and after watching the required ABC Nightly News video segments, construct a paper that critically evaluates whether or not the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act unjustly and unreasonably inhibit individual rights, be sure to support your evaluation by addressing the US Constitution Bill of Rights and explain how they impact notions of social justice in the United States.

The paper must be two to three pages in length, excluding title and reference pages, and formatted according to APA style. You must use at least two scholarly resources other than the textbook to support your claims. Cite your sources within the text of your paper and on the reference page. 

the two abc videos:

ABC Nightline News (Producer). (2003). 

Suspect or enemy combatant? (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

[Video file]. In The Patriot Act Under Fire. Retrieved from the Films On Demand database.

ABC Nightline News (Producer). (2003). 

Patriot Act and the Fourth Amendment (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

[Video file]. In The Patriot Act Under Fire. Retrieved from the Films On Demand database.

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Fourteen years after the Patriot Act gave sweeping spy powers to the government in

its war against terrorism, a consensus is finally emerging in Congress that the

government needs to be reined in—at least a bit. The next two weeks could

determine whether that consensus will yield a new law.

A Long-Awaited Reform to the Patriot Act
A bipartisan bill passed by the House on Wednesday would end the NSA’s bulk-

data-collection program.

RUSSELL BERMAN

MAY 14, 2015 | POLITICS

Pawel Kopczynski / Reuters

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In a bipartisan vote of 338-88, the House on Wednesday afternoon passed the USA

Freedom Act, which seeks to restrain the nation’s surveillance state while extending

other key parts of the 2001 Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the

month. At its core, the House measure ends the NSA’s bulk collection program first

exposed two years ago by Edward Snowden, and requires the government to be

more transparent about the data it seeks from citizens. The vote comes just a week

after a federal appeals court ruled that the Patriot Act’s controversial Section 215

did not authorize the bulk collection program, which allowed the NSA to access

domestic telephone metadata. The ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals

didn’t end the program, which the Freedom Act would.

The House measure represented a rare and genuine bipartisan compromise,

drawing support from the original author of the Patriot Act, conservative

Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, along with liberal Democrats

like John Conyers of Michigan and Jerrold Nadler of New York, staunch civil

libertarians. The White House has said that President Obama would sign it. Yet it

faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

wants to extend the entire Patriot Act, untouched, for another five years.

Democrats have vowed to block that effort and are hoping that the strong House

vote and the chance that the surveillance programs could expire altogether on June

1 will force McConnell to accept the reform bill. A short-term extension, giving the

Senate more time to debate, is also possible. (The Senate has a recess scheduled

after next week.)

“Today, we have a rare opportunity to restore a measure of
restraint to surveillance programs that have simply gone
too far.”

The bill’s supporters say it’s the most far-reaching reform to U.S. surveillance

programs in nearly 40 years. On the House floor, Conyers said the bill would put an

end to “dragnet surveillance” in the United States. “Today, we have a rare

opportunity to restore a measure of restraint to surveillance programs that have

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simply gone too far,” he said. Many privacy advocates, however, think it doesn’t go

far enough to protect civil liberties. They’ve criticized provisions that expand

surveillance powers by allowing access to data from more modern forms of

communication, like video chats. And they say the proposal doesn’t sufficiently

limit the search terms the NSA can use in requesting data and that it contains too

many loopholes that would allow the government to access data in an emergency

without a warrant. “It completely fails to meaningfully curtail mass surveillance

and actually codifies some of the worst modern spying practices into law,” said

Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, an Internet-freedom

advocacy group.

Activists also find little comfort in the fact that the bill has drawn support from the

intelligence community and tech firms. An earlier version of the proposal passed

the House last year but fell two votes of overcoming a filibuster in the Senate. The

current bill is worse, Greer said, because it weakens transparency requirements and

makes it easier for the government to cite “state secrets” and withhold information

from a new “special advocate”created to serve as a watchdog for the FISA court.

What’s interesting is that supporters in both parties readily admit that the

government will likely try to stretch the bounds of the new law just as it has with the

Patriot Act. The difference, they say, is that the public will know when they’re doing

it. “The government may one day again attempt to expand its surveillance powers

by clever legal argument, but it will no longer be allowed to do so in secret,”

Conyers argued.

“It completely fails to meaningfully curtail mass
surveillance and actually codifies some of the worst
modern spying practices into law.”

There’s also recognition among some privacy advocates that although the Tea Party

has helped elect more libertarian-minded conservatives to Congress, the USA

Freedom Act is likely the most significant reform possible under majorities still led

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by old-school Republican national-security hawks, and at a time when fears of a

terrorist attack remain ever-present. The ACLU, for example, is taking no formal

position on the bill even though it sent lawmakers a list of areas in which it didn’t go

far enough. That dynamic was on display this week when GOP House leaders

rejected a bid by a group of younger libertarian members to offer amendments that

would have further restricted the NSA. “This is a very delicate issue,” Speaker John

Boehner explained to reporters. “I know members would like to offer some

amendments, but this is not a place for people to bring out the wrecking ball.”

Broad majorities of House Democrats and Republicans decided on Wednesday that

the Freedom Act was good enough as is, increasing pressure on the Senate to accept

their compromise. Yet just how significant would the new law be? Lawmakers in

Congress have a tendency to hail just about any bill that gets a bipartisan vote as a

landmark achievement. Staunch privacy advocates dismiss it for paying lip service

to reform while leaving intrusive surveillance programs untouched. The truth on

this one lies somewhere in the middle, said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the

Brookings Institution and the author of its Lawfare blog. “This is a significant

reform and rollback of a FISA program,” he told me. But it pales in the context of

the extensive collections of NSA surveillance tools and the many, often unrelated

provisions of the Patriot Act. Section 215 is, after all, just one section, and the

reforms in this bill beyond ending bulk data collection are modest. “This is one,

small program,” Wittes said. “It is not the big enchilada, or even one of the big

enchiladas of the NSA programs.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RUSSELL BERMAN is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, where he covers political news.
He was previously a congressional reporter for The Hill and a Washington correspondent
for The New York Sun.

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