The Patriot Act — a terrorist’s worst nightmare.
Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Patriot Act will make committing an act of terrorism in the United States nearly impossible. Why, you ask? Because government agencies are able to violate individual liberties easier than ever before. Goodbye, privacy. But who cares? Every time I take a dump, I announce it to the world via Facebook.
“The [Patriot] Act made it easier to wiretap American citizens suspected of cooperating with terrorism, to snoop through business records without notification and to execute search warrants without immediately informing their targets,” according to a report by New York Magazine.
The article elaborates further, describing the privileges awarded to government agencies dealing with domestic affairs as originally reserved for special forces teams and CIA agents internationally, such as the sneak and peak, the act of obtaining a warrant and searching the residence of a target without notifying the target at all.
Between 2006 and 2009, there were 1,755 “delayed-notice search warrants issued under the expanded powers of the Patriot Act,” according to the report. Of those, 1,618 were issued for drugs, 122 for fraud and a mere 15 were issued for suspected terrorists. Not quite what the bill’s authors intended.
The Patriot Act isn’t really a partisan issue, to be honest. While it was enacted under President Bush after 9/11 and once renewed by Bush in 2005, it was also renewed by President Obama in 2010. It seems even the party that supports individual freedoms such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights seem to lose interest when it comes to phone tapping and questionable search and seizure.
People will argue that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from the Patriot Act. Only criminals and terrorists are afraid of the Patriot Act. However, I firmly believe that everyone out there has things he or she would rather not be made public, regardless of their legality.
My fear is that this will influence future elections. Clearly, the people in charge have showed us they have no interest in sticking to the original purpose of the bill. They’ll use it to gather dirt on anybody they can.
Having the ability to search through computer files, Internet search history, phone history or personal residence of a campaigning politician and then publicizing the findings can ruin a campaign. A large number of politicians in Washington are men, and what do men like? Women and pornography. Don’t believe me? Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, David Vitter. Need I say more?
You show me a male politician who claims to have never looked at porn, and I’ll show you a liar. To be honest, I’d rather anybody service himself privately to pornography than cheat on his significant other, but the general public will disagree. The masses, as always, will claim to be as pious and holy as Christ himself and go about crucifying the alleged muddler of family values.
Once it’s publicized, proving that any politician watched porn, made questionable financial decisions or Facebook-stalked a college ex can be portrayed as that person having questionable morals, despite the frequency that these activities occur amongst the general public.
I see another Watergate scandal on the horizon, except this time it won’t be illegal. All they have to say is they had probable cause to search an individual and somehow the seized information was leaked. Oops. Bye bye credibility, bye bye campaign. The dirtier will stay in office while the slightly less dirty will be kicked to the curb. America the beautiful.
My point is, just because the majority of us don’t have anything illegal to hide from The Man, doesn’t mean that we want all of our personal vices and virtues out there competing for the highest bidder. Nobody is as holy as he or she seems.
Parker Cramer is a 20-year-old political science junior from Houston, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_pcramer.
 
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Contact Parker Cramer at [email protected].