HLSS508 Foundations of Civil Liberties & Rights to Privacy Discussion Response

Responses should be a minimum of 250 words and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.

Forum posts are graded on timeliness, relevance, knowledge of the weekly readings, and the quality of original ideas. Sources utilized to support answers are to be cited in accordance with the APA writing style by providing a general parenthetical citation (reference the author, year and page number) within your post, as well as an adjoining reference list.

Respond to Aaron:

Discuss the pre-9/11 statutes that required the government to notify Americans when it collected private information compared to the post-9/11 statutes?

The pre-9/11 statutes were fair and just regarding the rights to privacy of all citizens within American. The declaration of independence signed by Jefferson lays the foundation for civil liberties that are never to be infringed. A total of five Amendments supports the privacy of the American people against any breach whatsoever (Scheppele, 2003). The first, third, fourth, fifth, and the ninth are all Amendments that guide the privacy of belief, arbitration, unreasonable searches, use of personal information, and all other privacy respectively. Before the 9/11 any breach of privacy would need to be accompanied by a court warranty for it to be valid and allowed. One notable statutory framework was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), of 1976 that outlawed that only made it possible to collect information electronically only under the auspice of a court order. All these measures changed drastically after the 9/11 incident. The statutes that came to place aimed at expanding the government’s ability to collect information both private and public in disregard of the former statutes such as the aforementioned (Evans, 2001). The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 implemented by the then President George Bush and the 107th Congress acted as a countermeasure to deal with terrorism without the concerns for the citizen’s rights. Unlike the pre 9/11 statutory, the post
Discuss how the USA Patriot Act expanded wiretapping and surveillance powers and how judicial review decreased.
The USA PATRIOT Act made various changes to the pre-9/11 statutes such as the FISA‘s surveillance authority commonly referred to as the wiretapping provision 206 that permits multipoint tapping in an attempt to identify a person for whom is suspected to engage or plan suspicious activities (Liu & Doyle, 2011). It also extends the duration of the wiretapping as provided by section 207 of the same. In terms of the judiciary, the power was decreased in that any surveillance did not warrant a court order for it to be affected, as long as the individual or institution under interrogation is identified no prompts would be made.
Has information sharing, intelligence oversight, and organizational mechanisms that were put in place after the 9/11 attacks improved?
Apart from the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act violated the privacy Amendments, conversely, the statutory framework had several positive effects such as improving the information sharing, enhanced multi-intelligence collaborations, and organizational mechanisms were also enhanced (Liu & Doyle, 2011). The result is that no major terror attacks were recorded after these actions were improved.

What should be the scope of intelligence collection in a democratic nation?

In a democratic country, the laws are above any institution and individuals as stipulated in the constitution of that nation. Therefore, infringement of privacy in never allowed whatsoever. The United States democracy could be questioned because of the violation of the laws and Amendments that protects the citizens from infringement of civil liberties.
1. IS it justified to infringe and violate liberties of the citizens and Amendment for reasons of securing the country?
2. Can the policy makers revert to the constitutional provision of pre-9/11 and still maintain the current standards?

Works Cited
Evans, J. C. (2001). Hijacking civil liberties: the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Loy. U. Chi. LJ, 33, 933.

Liu, E. C., & Doyle, C. (2011). Government Collection of Private Information: Background and Issues Related to the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization. Congressional Research Service, June, 16.

Scheppele, K. L. (2003). Law in a Time of Emergency: States of Exception and the Temptations of 9/11. U. Pa. J. Const. L., 6, 1001.

 

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