Securing America and Protecting Civil Liberties - Essay Example

The paper will shed light on the dynamics of civil liberties and the increasing security level that America needs to fulfill their duty to the nation. In a state of frenzy and panic the Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, six weeks after the 9/11 attack. This was a revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that allowed government further authority to spy on its own citizens. This was also an opportunity for the Congress to install the previously declined laws. The Act nevertheless violates the Constitution in many ways such as the First and Fourth Amendment.

The First amendment promises free speech whereas the Fourth says that the government has no right to conduct a search neither without warranty nor without proving that a particular person is accused or responsible for committing a crime. The Act infringed upon the first amendment by allowing the FBI to investigate the American citizens and the fourth amendment, by failing to notify the person whose privacy is being invaded without a pledge. Agencies and organizations that are responsible for security in America include “Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Geospatial-Imagery Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department (INR), the intelligence elements of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the military services and the Energy Department, and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Treasury Department, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the Coast Guard in DHS” (Best, 2010).

In addition to these, which already hold sophisticate and high protocol, The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was created “to analyze and integrate all intelligence possessed or acquired by any Federal agency” that were related to international terror acts. This appears to be USA in a state of paranoia but it took all measures possible to provide high security to its citizens who did not hesitate immediately after the September attack (Best, 2010). Civil liberties bear an ordinary and remote existence in everyday experiences.

But in certain contexts the issue of civil liberties might have a direct impact on peoples’ freedom and sanctuary. Davis believed that “The competing issues in the civil liberties vs. security trade-off are thus fundamental to the very idea of democracy as reflected in the Bill of Rights: that citizens should be protected from the government. Because it is the government’s actions that may clash with individual rights, we expect popular perceptions of government— trust in government, as well as patriotism—to play an important role in determining people’s willingness to trade off civil liberties for security.

” (Davis, 2004) The government still struggles with the idea of civil liberty and security because there is a chance of impeachment of one over the other. Clokie argues that the bill of rights needs to be closely analyzed before being misconceived. According to him it is an old remedy brought into practice because it takes a slink into the “past disappointments” (Clokie, 1947). America would go as far as torturing the truth out of the victim even if it takes his life. The violation of the amendments