A Threat to our Civil Liberties
...n has the right to be left alone. Joseph F. Fulda argues that a society cannot be free if its citizens do not have their right to privacy. The Patriot Act allows the government to conduct “sneak and peek”searches. This enables police officials to enter your home, office or any other private property, search it, take pictures, and confiscate any evidence needed for the investigation without telling you about it until after the search is performed (Egendorf 31). With this law in effect, police officials can perform searches without the probable cause of criminal conduct but rather because of a person’s political affiliation. The Patriot Act also permits law enforcement to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans around the world. Government officials can contact a telephone company and request certain telephones lines to be listen to confirming that the evidence being used is “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation” (30). This law reduces the privacy of Americans to a minimum and violates the fourth amendment of the Constitution. The power that the Patriot Act has given to government officials forces the American people to sacrifice their civil liberties for the safety of their country. But is it worth throwing away the one thing that makes America different from other totalitarian countries, their freedom to conduct the privacy of their lives without government interference. Another law being enforced by the Patriot Act that destroys the democratic structure of the American government is the policy of detaining suspected terrorists without due process of law. Engraved in the Constitution is the rights of the accused. It states that no one should be deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of law. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration ignored that amendment and changed the procedures and policies of arresting and charging a criminal or suspected terrorist. Since the attacks of 9/11, Ashcroft has detained more than 1,100 immigrants of Arab and Muslim background based on “reasonable grounds to believe” that these persons are suspected terrorists (Egendorf). Reports have shown that these immigrants have been detained without a right to bail, a filing of charges, and a right to an attorney (157). The only process of law the immigrant is awarded is the right to go to federal court and sue (157). The procedural fairness of American law is being stripped away slowly from the individuals who posses it in an effort to “ensure national security.” What the American government is trying to tell us is that in a time of urgency, it is justifiable to treat non-Americans unfairly, and horribly. On November13, 2001, a military order was passed, the second part to the Patriot Act that authorized the military commission to convict suspected terrorists (Crotty 150). According to Crotty, President Bush justified the use of military tribunals by explaining that it was needed to protect the evidence brought forth during these trials that would help prevent the future from another attack (151). But in the Constitution, the use of military tribunals while the United States is at war is unlawful. In a military tribunal, the trial may be closed, military officers replace judges and the jury, the conviction of an individual only requires two-thirds of the vote, and the suspect doesn’t have the right to choose a lawyer. The military order also allows the use of military tribunals to convict detained imm...