Threat to Your Right Of...

Not everyone recognizes August 5th as a sort of special occasion. Of course, there really is no holiday in the month of August that is present on commercial calendars hung in post offices.

On this day, almost two years ago, former-president George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, and the day the basic freedoms of Americans shriveled and died. Also known as the Protect America Act, it was drawn by a panicked Congress in response to the attacks of the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. Advocated by Congress, and essentially the government as a whole, it is claiming "to enable our intelligence community to close a critical intelligence gap that existed before the Act became law" and in turn, making the nation safer.

But how, in anyone's right mind, does this make our nation safer? By tapping your phones? By following and seizing private documents and records without probable cause? By imprisoning its own citizens without probable cause and without trial?

That's funny, because the last time I checked, that sounds a lot like treason. But wait, it's the government. Exactly. The government is committing treason against its own citizens.

By using these new "tools", it gives our government some sort of authority to violate basic legal rights stated in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. According to the bill, the government may conduct secret searches, perform roving wiretaps, and gain access to highly personal medical, financial, mental health, and student records, authorizes law enforcement officials to force librarians and booksellers to hand over check-out and internet usage records, investigate citizens for criminal activity without probable cause, search a person's home without anyone present and to delay warrant or notification until deemed proper, incarcerate citizens without probable cause and warrant, and deny the citizen an attorney or trial by peers.

Right off the bat, this directly violates the first and fourth amendments for freedoms of speech, liberty, association, and legal representation. And also violating freedoms from unreasonable searches and right to a speedy and public trial. In other words, for years unbeknown to you, the government could’ve been following and intercepting your emails and internet sites while tapping your phones, then search your home when you are out, arrest and jail you without addressing cause or charges while denying your right to an attorney and a trial, and keep you there for however long they deem necessary, all in the name of anti-terrorism.

Now, think. By empowering our government with even greater surveillance authority and censorship, where is the line drawn to where we still have basic rights as American citizens? Or are we even still considered American citizens at all? As Winston Churchill once wrote, “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known and deny judgment of peers is in the highest degree odious and the foundation of all totalitarian government.”