The Patriot Act failed miserably to thwart terrorist acts, but it successfully helped to usher in a constant police state of government surveillance and the collection of digital information over the web.
Series - The Patriot Act
The IRS, the FBI, or the Federal Reserve, are all at minimum aconstitutional if not outright unconstitutional and yet, they continue unchallenged to this day.
21 years later, we can see the Patriot Act for what it truly is: an overreach in power by our government and a threat to the civil liberties of all Americans.
Americans around my age and younger have never really known a world without the Patriot Act's influence.
As a one-time supporter and believer in the Patriot Act, I can now say there is nothing at all patriotic about the Patriot Act, and it is time for it to be removed from the books.
Senators, congresspeople, and presidents are not typically in the business of deconstructing tools that increase the power they can wield.
Like so many government policies, the Patriot Act is a shell game, promising to protect us from enemies abroad but instead being turned inward to persecute American citizens.
History is only valuable if we are able to learn from the mistakes of the past and prevent them from recurring in the future.