Analysis: The Land Of The Unfree

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The Land of the Unfree The word “patriot” has changed in meaning throughout time; however it has always seemed to be defined as someone that vigorously supports their country. Within the last few decades terrorism has become a major issue and if it wasn’t for the creation of the USA Patriot Act in 2001, by President George W. Bush, we probably would have had a larger amount of terrorist attacks then we actually had. The Patriot Act has helped monitor foreign communications, as well as electronic communications in America. This act was created in response to the tragedy that happened on September 11th, 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York. As of December 2011 the Patriot Act has prevented over 42 terrorist attacks on American soil, that’s …show more content…
There are a lot of terrorist attacks you don’t read about in the paper, the reason for that is because they were either stopped or contained to protect the American people, for example in September 2009, federal agents arrested Naji-bullah Zazi and four others for purchasing chemical explosive materials to try and bomb the New York subway system (Fox 19 Now). One of the most recent and most tragic events was the Boston Bombing back in April 2013. The Patriot Act was not able to prevent the attack to happen, but it allowed the NSA to identify the Tsarnaev brothers and uncovered a follow up attack that was going to happen in Fall 2013 by going through cell phone pictures and email records. Fortunately, with the fatality of one brother and the arrest of the other one they were unable to go on with their plans (History.com Staff). Along with Al-Qaeda, there are many other terrorist groups around the world that would want to harm America, one of the most dangerous is ISIS. If the Patriot Act were to be fully removed then America will no longer be able to monitor foreign communications and immigrants coming in from third world countries. This could lead to terrorists slipping right into America with fake passports or real ones because they don’t need to worry about the NSA …show more content…
It wasn’t until the Patriot Act that America finally started to become protected fully from terrorism and other foreign affairs. The current issue is that the Patriot Act recently lost some serious sections; most importantly the NSA can no longer store information from what the gather using the Patriot Act. A lot of citizens are rejoicing because they believe that they no longer are being monitored, but they only removed that they can’t long-term store information anymore, so that means were still being monitor and prosecute terrorist and criminals and crimes using the Patriot Act. The scariest part is that the recent cancellation of the renewal shows that storm is a brewing and either the Patriot Act is going to be fully removed or hopefully a more advanced and detailed act will be created. Terrorism is still a major issue today; however the Patriot Act can still monitor the Internet to prevent terrorist groups, like ISIS, from communicating and planning other terrorist attacks around the world (ABC News). The world has definitely changed since 2001, but as it’s changed many people are beginning to overlook what happened fourteen years ago, because it’s all in the “past”. How can you call one of the most tragic disasters in American history unimportant? We need to change our ways of thinking before we

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