Friday, May 2, 2014

Another Big Brother

Vicky Hatakeyama
Section A02
Reflection 6: In Response to the USA Patriot Act by Doyle

Reading this document about what the USA Patriot Act is and the purpose of it, I found out that this response to the terrorists’ attacks of 9/11 made the federals become more aware of their surroundings.  With this Act, it gives the government officials the right to “track and intercept communications, both for law enforcement and foreign intelligence gathering processes” (Doyle).  To combat such corruption of the US government and society, this act utilizes such silent yet intelligent strategies such as creating new crimes and penalties for use against domestic and international terrorist.  This is a productive way to identify such communications of criminals without them knowing.  It may seem as if it is not right for the federal officials to do these tacit activities, but at the end, it can save a couple or not numerous deaths that may occur from the terrorists’ actions.  Also, by increasing the penalty, there will be a slight decrease in the probability of a terrorist movement to occur.  In addition to that, the increase in rewards for any information in terrorism cases will also bring others to commit/engage more in investigating criminals and terrorist communications.  At the same time, this Act takes away ones’ privacy, which interferes with the right of freedom from that person.  It comes down to the matter of whether one wants more safety or wants privacy.



Is the Patriot Act just another failure of the government’s idea just like of that in Orwell’s 1984? 

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