Patriot Act And Information Security

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Tools Within the Agencies. Information sharing is not the only tool that comes along with the Patriot Act. Agencies such as the Secret Service, Air Marshals, and Border Patrol exist to help prevent terrorism. Another agency where anti- terrorism acts have been exemplary is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There was an instance in an airport in Miami where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a suspected foreign money launderer named Libardo Florez-Gomez. He laundered over one million dollars to Columbia every month for a terrorist group by the name of FARC. The agent who caught him was aware of the Patriot Acts and the new elements that came along with it in the act of preventing terrorism. For circumstances comparable …show more content…
On the contrary many cases have been examined as to why the Patriot Act is considered in more ways the one unconstitutional. After researching different cases, scenarios, and the fine print in the Patriot Act it is apparent there are some questions being raised as to whether or not people’s Fourth Amendment rights are being violated here. Historically, before the Patriot Act was put into place the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was made in order to correctly manage information gathering. The FISA Act was put into place after the Vietnam War in order to prevent corruption in the government, such as the Watergate Scandal and anti-communism investigations. After 9/11 and in the wake of the Patriot Act the FISA Act was expanded to include what is considered to be “Tangible Things.” According to George Pike in his article USA Patriot Act still raising questions he states “With the PATRIOT Act, FISA was modified to provide a number of new investigative tools and resources. This included an expanded definition of terrorist activity and a lower threshold for launching a terrorist-related investigation. In addition, the PATRIOT Act changed the definition of what kinds of records could be obtained or searched… The PATRIOT Act expanded the law to allow the production of "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items). ...(Pike, 2015, p.1).” In regards to these “tangible things” the newest controversy has risen as to whether or not …show more content…
Recently the National Security Agency has been under fire since Edward Snowden released information about a secret program they have been conducting with major cell phone companies. Basically this program allowed the NSA to retain certain information from phone calls made across the country. When this information was released to the public many people began to worry about the information the government really had access to. They can obtain information including who is calling who, how long the call is, and what kind of device and service they are using to make the phone call. Controversy over this rose because it was understood that many people’s phone calls were being watched and put into a database and they had no idea that it was even happening. The Patriot Act actually was used to find this NSA secret program constitutional. Basically the act states that in order to have this information it needs to be relevant to an investigation. The court did decide however that it was not violating constitutional rights. The Patriot Act is being affected in many ways because of new information being released to the public about what information the government has access to. A particular section of the Patriot Act (section 215) can be renewed by congress and has been many times. The controversy lies to whether or not the information being taken by the public is relevant to an

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