Securing America and Protecting Civil Liberties - Essay Example

The liberties held so dear to the Americans was changed in number of ways where the law enforcements agencies had the right of conducting the searches of the homes and offices without a notice in advance or there were regular monitoring of the computers, email messages and text messages so that the clients can be eaves dropped on and so on. The clash between the civil liberties and the national security had taken place a number of times where the restrictive laws have played an important role to abridge the gap that exists between the two.

In response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, on September 14, 2001, Geroge W.Bush declared the state of emergency which gave him the right to invoke his presidential rights passing the Patriot Act which not only centralized the law enforcement powers to the Justice Department, but also gave CIA the oversight of the gathering of the domestic intelligence, and the rights of the citizens and non residents as stated in the constitution were disregarded. After the terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act has played a very important role where several have debated over how ethical or unethical the Act was.

The Department of Justice wanted to do everything possible to ensure that the terrorist attacks in the future can be prevented and therefore Patriot Act in this respect played a very important but at the same time a very controversial role. There were a number of operations carried out so that the Americans could be protected but in the aim of protecting the innocent America, their way of life was put in jeopardy and the true essence of the America life style was lost. It has been debated a couple of times that the first amendment, fourth amendment have been affected and eroded by the USA Patriot Act which gave birth to a large number of legislative changes , where most importantly the investigative powers of the law enforcement agencies was increased.

Amendment 1 stated: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (Bill of Rights and Later Amendments ushistory.org) Amendment 2 stated: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

” (Bill of Rights and Later Amendments ushistory.org) The American Government made changes to the surveillance laws and gave the law enforcement authorities to not only spy on the citizens but also limit the checks on those powers such as public accountability etc. “The USA Patriot Act permits seizure of voice mail pursuant to a search warrant , allows victims of computer trespassing to invite law enforcement to monitor attacks on their computers without needing a court order.” (Etzioni, A.

, & Marsh, J. H. (2003). Rights vs. public safety after 9/11: America in the age of terrorism. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield) Initially when America declared the war on terrorism, it was