Section A02
Reading Reflection week 6
In Response to "The Patriot Act: A Sketch" by Charles Doyle
The Patriot Act was enacted in 2001 after the September 11 twin towers terrorist attack. It allowed for federal officials to track and intercept communication in order to gather intelligence on foreign subjects. However, by doing this, everyone was affected. In order to gather information on a terrorist, information needs to be gathered upon everyone. Nobody is going to outright admit to terrorism so everyone needs to be checked. The issue with this however is privacy.
Everyone needs privacy, and just as important, people need to know they have privacy. When people talk on the phone they expect to be talking only to the person that they are talking to. They feel more free to talk about whatever they want to talk about. When this privacy is given up, people can supposedly feel safer, but nobody really cares about that enough to give up their privacy. A person might not necessarily have something to hide, but just knowing the fact the somebody they don't know could be listening on his/her conversation is deeply disturbing. There is a clear trade off between privacy and safety, and one should not be picked as more important to leave the other unconsidered.
Questions:
1) Is safety worth the cost of privacy?
2) Where do we draw the line of privacy invasion?
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