Conclusion

Civil liberties have been a casualty of war since the country was founded.  Presidents from Adams to Lincoln and from Wilson to Bush have sacrificed civil liberties in times of crisis.  The USA Patriot Act is the most recent example.

The United States Patriot Act was passed on October 26, 2001 by George W. Bush with a Senate vote of 98 to 1 and a House vote of 357 to 66. It was passed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th. The act expanded laws to enable the government to create more surveillance in the country. By enacting this law, the government has created a great conflict between those that agree with the act, mainly conservatives, and those that think this gives the government too much power, mostly liberals. The act has enlarged the power of the government when fighting terrorism and is also used to find information on other crimes including false information on terrorism.

The USA Patriot Act, along with its reauthorization legislation has lead to much heated debate throughout the country. Among its most avid supporters are the Department of Justice, the Bush Administration, the FBI, and numerous politicians. These supporters claim that the Patriot Act has provided the necessary tools that law enforcement agencies need in order to protect the country against terror attacks. Those that oppose the Patriot Act include the American Civil Liberties Union, Librarians, and a variety of politicians like Russell Feingold. They feel that the implementation of the Patriot Act has lead to the abandonment of the protection of certain civil liberties. This ongoing battle between the supporters and challengers of the act seems to be one that will continue for quite a while, especially considering that the reauthorization legislation made permanent and modified many of the provisions established by the original act. Both sides have won important victories, for instances, the supporters were able to pass the reauthorization legislation, and the challengers were able to win important cases and were instrumental in helping to safeguard important individual liberties in the reauthorization legislation. While no one side can be deemed unanimously victorious in the conflict over the Patriot Act, it can be inferred that the supporters have made important strides in helping to make the act a permanent part of contemporary American surveillance.

Case studies of how the Patriot Act has been used illustrate the act’s far reach on Americans across the country. Although most actions taken under the Patriot Act remain confidential, these cases show the act has been used to keep intellectual thinkers out of the country, to shut down humanitarian charities, to force libraries to hand over patron information in secret, to convict a killer and to require that banks only transfer money among customers they know. The importance of these case studies rest in the questions they raise about possible implications of the Patriot Act. For instance, if people know that they are being watched, will their behaviors change? Will people stop visiting public libraries or asking tough political questions? The possible normalizing effects of the Patriot Act are the common grounds of concern among most who oppose the act today.

As we have pointed out, The USA Patriot Act has a past.  Various surveillance laws have existed throughout US history. The Patriot Act is one variation, specifically targeting terrorism. Al-Qaeda’s technical ingenuity stultified the new media space’s codes and architecture, leading to the stultification of existing surveillance laws such as ECPA. Consequently, extensive reconstruction was needed. A new law (Patriot Act) – although it is essentially a revision – was made, and it allowed the establishment of a powerful new architecture in the new media space. Fundamentally, this powerful new architecture is concerned with surveillance on the new media space: as a result the space becomes more and more restricted.

This point has serious implications for the ongoing debate about whether the new media space, for example, the Internet, will become a means of social control or of citizen empowerment. No citizen wants to live in an “insecure” society, but on the other hand, no citizen wants the state to invade his or her privacy. The state has a duty to remove the factors that cause social unrest, while at the same time protecting the privacy of its citizens: the tension between control (security) and privacy (civil liberties) constitutes one of the dynamics of society. Ultimately, debates around the Patriot Act are a reflection of this tension and the dynamics of contemporary society.