The Pros And Cons Of The Patriot Act

On September 11, 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked by sixteen members of the terrorist organization known as al-Qaeda. Two of the planes were sent to the World Trade Center in New York City, another was sent to the Pentagon in Washington D.C, while the final plane was forcibly brought down in fields outside of suburban Pennsylvania. These hijackings led to the loss of 2,980 lives, and the events of 9/11 would become the largest terrorist attack on United States soil. In the wake of these attacks, Congress quickly passed the USA PATRIOT Act, also known as the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act. The Patriot Act, as it is more commonly referred to, was created with the goal of providing government agencies the tools to seek out and prosecute any terrorists planning an attack within the country. Unfortunately for the American people, Congress was indifferent to the fact that many provisions of the Patriot Act were a violation of the Constitution. The Patriot Act has granted government establishments the capability of
The Heritage Foundation, at a republican debate, tried to assert that the Patriot Act had stopped 42 terrorist plots since the events of 9/11. In fact, only about a third of their claimed plots had an arrest. Multiple plots would have worked if not for a simple mechanical mistake made by an inexperienced terrorist, as in the case of the failed shoe bomber Richard Reid and the Christmas Day underwear bomber (Swann). Earlier this year, the Inspector General at the Department of Justice, Michael E. Horowitz, admitted that, “agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders”