Civil Liberties and safety Benjamin Franklin once said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It should be every rational citizen’s question if we should exchange our civil liberties for safety. How far do we have to go to keep our civil liberties from being violated? We are consistently surveyed by the government in every step. The government is going through our phone calls, text messages, private emails and social media. It’s almost impossible to keep anything privates nowadays. In my opinion, there should be a limit on how much of our privacy is surveyed by the government. Nowadays it’s hard to live a secret life. Every move we make is being watched. National security is the main reason why we are being surveyed. Our world has transformed to an internet revolution. We are engaged much in social media and internet more than ever. People are able to incite a revolution like the one in Egypt in recent years. The world we live in is much different to what it was twenty years ago. Internet changed the power of information exchange between us. Social media’s like Facebook and twitter connects the world tremendously. People exchange information in a matter of seconds. Therefore, the question becomes: Should our government go through our private emails and social media? As we learned in class, it’s our constitutional right not be searched without a court paper. The Fourth Amendment says “people have the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, and that no warrant shall issue but on probable cause and specifying the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” However, we are being searched by the government consiste... ... middle of paper ... ...goes against every American constitutional right. If we enable government officials to take away our civil liberties we are going to become a fearful nation. When our founding fathers created the constitution they intended for us to have civil liberties. Politicians would say anything to get elected. Candidates like Donald trump benefits by inciting fear among citizens. What scares me is that if we vote for candidates like him our civil liberties would never be the same. Our government would determine what’s good or bad for us. That’s not freedom. This is the time where we need to draw between safety and civil liberty. Are American citizens giving up freedoms because of the war to terrorism with only the promise of safety? Are our civil liberties routinely violated? Do civil liberties exist the way they used to? Are they restricted to suit the governments needs
We only have one life to live on this earth, and it should be our lives to live privately and freely. With so much surveillance, can we actually say that there is not a cost of freedom? Clearly, people need open their eyes and see mass surveillance is hindering out ability to see threats, and by the time we do it is too late. Something needs to be done, because innocent Americans should not be monitored everyday when the people who are a threat seem to be over looked. That is the most dangerous thing of all, not being able shift through the muck of useless information, while enemies could be planning something big. We Americans, have the right to be protected and not to be treated like a threat by our own government.
Constitutional Law was created as the chosen way to preserve the United States of America Constitution, ratified by Congress in 1783, in respect to its meanings, use, and enforcement, for free government, and equal justice under the law for all Americans. However, as times and generations have passed, the U.S. Constitution remains the supreme law of the land. Among the most contemporary and controversial elements are the challenges of evolving interpretations of the freedom of speech, and search warrants, which have both had a major impact on society. In particular, we explore speech not protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, as well as some circumstances when a search warrant is not required for a valid search. A conclusion is drawn and outlined based on research conducted to offer a concise in-depth observation of the above topics.
Government seems to take away more privacy than they say they protect. In 1984 the citizens were constantly being monitored no matter where they were, there was no escape. "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away" (Orwell 62). Members of the party were constantly being monitored, at even the slight sign of disloyalty they would be apprehended by the Thought Police, striking fear into the people. People had no privacy due to the government and this can now be seen today. Referring to the NSA "The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world"(Lopez np). Growing use of internet and technology makes it easier for the government to spy on us. Like in 1984 they will soon be able to track our every move. There is no way to completely remove ourselves from technology, there's are steps to take to protect privacy. A solution is to keep more records on paper instead of online. Also, what is posted on social networks should be limited. The less information you give them, the less the government knows.
The First Amendment protects our rights of free speech and assembly, the independence of the press, and prohibits official establishment or unfair criticism of any particular religion. Free speech rights can be thought of as having two parts, the right to have free access to ideas, and the right to express ideas freely. The right to calm assembly goes with free speech given that demonstrations and other political activity are protected as expressive behavior. While government actions threaten all these rights stated by the First Amendment, it is our free speech and assembly rights which are most at risk. The USA PATRIOT Act contains provisions that will criminalize people's legitimate expressions of their political views. For example, the Act creates a new category of crime; domestic terrorism blurs the line between speech and criminal activity. Section 802 of the Act defines domestic terrorism as "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of criminal laws" that "appear to be inten...
...ots and in effect saved a great many lives, however Edward Snowden has stated that “Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.” We are in more danger of death by falling out of our bathtubs of being killed by the people who “protect” us than we are by being killed by a terrorist, and yet our government would ignore that, and use terrorism as a false pretense to freelance monitor its people.
Is the patriot act necessary if it protects but threatens our civil liberates? The patriot act threatens civil liberates. The U.S. is spying without the people’s consent. The patriot act will prevent terrorist attacks on the United States. The patriot act can be used to catch wanted criminals. The patriot act protects the people from danger but jeopardizes their civil rights.
Typically the most basic civil liberties are found in a country’s bill of rights and then that country passes amendments as needed in order to grow the peoples’ civil liberties, or shrink them if need be. Now, in the case of the United States the people are not “granted“ civil liberties by the...
From the beginning, the United States Constitution has guaranteed the American people civil liberties. These liberties have given citizens rights to speak, believe, and act freely. The Constitution grants citizens the courage to express their mind about something they believe is immoral or unjust. The question is, how far are citizens willing to extend the meanings of these liberties? Some people believe that American citizens take advantage of their civil liberties, harming those around them. On the contrary, many other people feel that civil liberties are necessary tools to fight for their Constitutional rights.
After the horrific incident on September 9, 2001, the Patriot Act was passed to help “reduce” terrorist attacks, but they have only restricted us from our rights and feeling free. Regardless of whether we have anything to hide, we deserve to feel comfortable in our own homes. They can even hack into our TVs and cameras! This is unacceptable! We have been dealing with the violation of our privacy due the Patriot Act, but this act led to the abuse of governments’ power, violation of our natural rights, and the government has been going through our texts, internet history, social media, which is breaching into the laws of the constitution.
Throughout American history, our civil liberties as American citizens have evolved immensely. For example, the first ten amendments in the U.S. Constitution are referred to as the “The Bill of Rights,” which contains some of the most cherished civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and religion. These civil liberties however, did not originally apply to state governments or institutions the state established. The Bill of Rights focused solely on what the national government could not do, allowing state governments to do whatever they wanted. For example, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire supported Congregationalist ministers with tax payer dollars for decades. After the Civil War, civil liberties expanded, because three new amendments were added: the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery, the Fourteenth, which redefined civil liberties and rights, and the Fifteenth, which allowed adult, male citizens to vote. The due process clause (contained in the Fourteenth Amendment) became one of the most important civil liberties, because it applied the language of the Fifth Amendment to state governments, proclaiming that they could not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....
Recently it’s been harder to claim we are the home of the brave. More and more people are acting afraid of things that have not happened. They are telling us that we should be afraid too. That we should not question the decisions they make. That doesn’t seem very brave to me. The whole idea of being afraid and giving up our civil liberties seems to be anti-American. JFK once said “Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
in some circumstances to ensure national security, as we can't guaranty that all citizen would behaved responsibly towards the interest of our nation. For examples after many attacked that has been done to our country, the government did take away certain civil liberties on the basis
The attacks on American soil that solemn day of September 11, 2001, ignited a quarrel that the grade of singular privacy, need not be given away in the hunt of grander security. The security measures in place were planned to protect our democracy and its liberties yet, they are merely eroding the very existence with the start of a socialistic paradigm. Benjamin Franklin (1759), warned more than two centuries ago: “they that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Implementing security measures comes at a cost both economically and socially. Government bureaucrats can and will utilize information for personal political objectives. The Supreme Court is the final arbitrator of what the ‘law is”, causing a lack of circulated rule. The actual leaders with political purposes jeopardize our individual privacy rights, liberties, and freedoms.
The United States is in a tricky situation. First and foremost, we are a country that prides itself on being free. Even the fourth amendment to our Constitution declares, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Yet we are also a country that demands security. Americans expect that our government will keep us safe. These two ideals, freedom and security, are often at odds. How can we expect our government to stop terrorism without infringing on our rights? Recent disclosures, that the government has access to American phone calls and emails, have brought this debate to the forefront of public discourse.
...onal privacy dead?” brings up many other questions along with it. But there is no doubt that the government is doing all of what they are doing for safety reasons. They claim to want to make the United States as safe as possible, and this has proved to ring true in many situations. But now the inevitable new question becomes: How far is too far? Is safety more important than privacy? To know these answers, one must ask themselves and know their own opinion on the situation. But whatever their answers may be, and despite the multiple other questions that are brought up along with the topic of personal privacy, there is still one thing that is known for sure: personal privacy is dead. And unless the use of technology becomes less critical to the United States, personal privacy will always be dead. The bigger the role technology has; the less personal privacy there is.