Even those provided no context about the law -- who wrote it, what did it do, how did it change our civil liberties, was it worth the loss of freedom, would it actually keep it safer, etc. Thus, there was little critical coverage of the law, suggesting the media failed in their role of watchdog of the powerful.
Well, the law is still with us (just renewed again without privacy provisions in place for another year by Congress and President Obama). And the problems with the law remain. Yet, there is almost no coverage of these issues in the inner-ring/uper-tier media.
Luckily, organizations like these allow us to learn more about the law. But to learn the truth, you have to go to these sources, for the media are simply not covering the story.
Spend some time there and learn the facts.
http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/
http://w2.eff.org/patriot/
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/usa-patriot-act
The relationship between the citizens of the United States and Congress is like a marriage falling apart,"WE HAVE NO COMMUNICATION"! Congress is out of order themselves also. After 9/11 everyone is paying attention to too much of the minor concerns and not paying enough attention to the major concerns which is leaving us unprotected.
ReplyDeleteThis law was passed because of 100% FEAR. We the Americans give up our liberties and freedoms because we are afraid of someone in a turret is going to come and destroy our families. This law was supposed to be temporary but yet its still here after 10 years. I would like to take a survey and see how many people would take back their votes for passing the Patriot Act. We have war on drugs because of drugs taking over the USA in an epidemic and now we have a war on terrorism. Its hard to have a war on an inatomate object or thing.
ReplyDeleteAmerica passes laws that we think will protect us. Obviously, this is pretty good logic, right? However, when our rights are constantly being violated, is it still a good thing? The Patriot Act is a great example of innocent Americans being watched, taped, and surveilled. The fact that a CIA agent or FBI agent can do surveillance on an innocent American without their knowledge is outrageous. It is very clear, that the media does not cover much of the Patriot Act anymore, and I bet that the majority of Americans don't even know how evasive this law is!
ReplyDeleteThe PATRIOT Act is a prime example of a few different things from our text; first and foremost, the media relied on official state sources for information (reliability) so that put the government firmly in control about the information in this bill...not that it got passed with much more than a bilp. And perhaps I’m wrong about this (please correct me if I am) but I don’t recall it getting any coverage at all until Michael Moore called attention to it and the fact it was horrid and that no one, not even the people who passed it had much of a clue what was in it. Even back then I loosely followed some “liberal” information sources and missed the passage of the act.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing this is an example of is propaganda! This was cooked up during the “for us or against us” period, and I hardly think that the convenient acronym was accidental. Calling what is among the LEAST patriotic actions taken against American citizens in recent history the PATRIOT Act; easily allowing naysayers at the time as unpatriotic. And if the name game worked on Congress, why wouldn’t it work on everyday people? Kind of like The Ministry of Truth...
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ReplyDeleteThe USA PATRITOT Act was passed as something to protect Americans, and I understand that some right have been violated, but is it not better to have some rights violated, (in which many do not even know their rights have been violated) then to be dead. Then you may have rights, but good luck trying to use them! Plus it is not like when the government is taping peoples' phones, they are listening for thoes having phone sex, or a spouse that is cheating on thier significant other, or your personal family issues. With something as important as national security I am sure they could care less! Then there is always the philosophy of you have nothing to hide, or done nothing wrong, what does it matter you have nothing to fear, just like with a lot of their investigations that turn up blank... I would say that is a slight victory, at least they did not let it go and it turn out to be what they feared. There is also the arguement of it not being used for only terroroism but also for "domestic crime" well key word in that is "crime" and someone who commits a crime is a what??? Oh that is right a criminal, which is a danger to society so in a way still keeping us safe. Plus peole who commit crimes deserve to be caught, too many already get away with crime as it is, and that brigs me to my last point, obvioulsy it is not catching too much "domestice crime" beacuse there are still a lot that no one knows about, or the person never gets caught.
ReplyDelete@littlebit, good points, but let's not forget that: 1) You are a criminal, too. 2) If you don't defend your freedoms they will be gone forever. We love our freedom as Americans, and that includes the right to privacy as implied in the 4th Amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure).
ReplyDeleteNo one wants the government to fail to keep us safe. We all want to live. The only question is what is reasonable in their searches? Some of us think they've gone too far.
Regardless of that though, let's not lose sight of why this story is in the book and on the blog. It's not about what you think or I think about the law. It's here to make the point that the media did not even raise these important issues so that we could get informed about them in order to make up our own minds.