Power, Privilege, Security - Essay Example

Privacy does not include the opportunity to cause harm. What the employee does on his personal time that does not present a danger to others in the workplace, e.g., smoking or having unprotected sex, is not the concern of the employer, not directly under the employer's rightful control, and not subject to scrutiny through any means; much less through a device as inconsistent as a polygraph. It is not the responsibility of an employer to supervise its workers on such a microcosmic level. Even Kant, in his most moralistic application of a categorical imperative would find no duty on the part of the employer to police the employees in such an intrusive manner.

Employees are not children and employers are certainly not empowered to treat them as such. As far as the use of a pre-screening process whereby an employer determines what is and what is not acceptable activity in the private lives of its employees, a more arbitrary and capricious means of discrimination could hardly be imagined. Even the libertarian-especially the libertarian-would see such discriminatory practice as rife with the potential for abuse. My Position: I am for the Patriot Act in general because I feel that increasing police powers for the purposes of protecting the American public can be done reasonably and without violating anyone's constitutional rights.

Amendments to section. First, it clarifies the level of detail necessary to obtain a section 206 order, particularly where the target is identified by a description rather than by name. Second, it imposes a "return" requirement on investigators, meaning that in most circumstances the government is required to provide notice to the court within 10 days that surveillance has been directed at a new facility or place.Statement in Support of Section 206. As quoted above, Section 206 provides for the issuance of "an electronic surveillance order that attaches to a particular target rather than a particular phone or computer" (DOJ 1).

This section of the Patriot Act assists federal authorities in focusing their efforts on a suspect individual and monitor communication across all possible areas of communication rather than having to get court authority for each different mode. In the case of Mr. X, who intended to plant a bomb in the main terminal of Grand Central Station in New York, authorities were severely limited in their surveillance abilities. Having sufficient information from a reliable informer, authorities obtained a warrant to tap the home telephone of Mr. X. The terrorist was technologically astute, and discovered the monitoring of his conversations with the co-conspirators.

He immediately began to use a series of cell phones and private chat rooms on the Internet to prevent authorities from stopping his intended attack. Section 206 allows investigative agencies to obtain a warrant for any electronic device that Mr. X might use, and thereby provide a timely response to stop him and his associates from carrying out their plans.Counter Argument. It has been asserted that