The Patriot Act: Protecting American Constitutional Rights

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Introduction

Predictive methods of assessing threat methodologies rely on the belief that humans behave in predictable ways and that future behavior can be predicted. New policing technologies collection is a fundamental capability for the identification of individuals. The collection of multiple sources of information provides an increased probability for positive identification (PID) of an individual using emerging technology. Because predictive policing and intelligence-led policing involve gathering a wide range of different types of data, they inevitably raise concerns among civil libertarians. We are in a technology revolution today. Implementation system that can chart the past activities of an adversary or criminal element through the importation of tabular, imagery, and biometric data is a powerful tool. As the deviant behavior becomes more aware of the importance of technology to identify criminal operations, criminal infrastructure, and identity dominance, the criminal element becomes more sophisticated in their means to “spoof” or counter police effort. In short, the more technical information collected, the higher the probability of single encounter identification, and the greater the probability for future PID encounters. With this onset of new policing where the collection is based on public information of its citizen's use of social media, law enforcement must provide safeguards to prevent violations of your constitutional rights. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act provides protection based on authorization or exceeding law enforcement need to know of personal information. The US code is vague in it speaks of knowingly accessed a computer (Cornell, n.d).

Patriot Act

The purpose of the implementation of the Patriot Act was to have a mechanism to aid our law enforcement with investigatory tools and nonconventional goals (Act, 2001). This ACT was placed into law in October 2001 in which the Senate approved by a vote of 98-1 and the House of Representatives by 357-66. The justification during the George W. Bush presidency was based on the government's needs to use methods that had the potential to be invasive of civil and constitutional rights. This approval allowed law enforcement the ability to deliberate tracking and intercepting communications, both for purposes of law enforcement and collection of sensitive information on foreign and US citizens. Additionally, it provides a course of action for the Treasury to counter corruption of organization within the US financial institutions for money-laundering. The freedom of access has enhanced terrorist ability to gain funding in the criminal markets to organize and control the free flow of capital. Banks (2010) Security and Freedom After September 11, explains that the execution of this fight against terrorist activity has created a challenge to our constitutional given rights to privacy. Banks' article takes an examination of the Patriot Act and how federal lawmakers can conduct its investigation within the thin margins of this invasive law (Banks, 2010).

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The intent of this act that was articulated by Banks was to give law enforcement the latitude to wage offensive operations to counter-terrorist activities. With any power, misuse is predictable in which numerous violations of false arrests caused significant concerns pertaining to civil liberties (Banks, 2010). Additionally, the article examines the bias judgment prosecutor is left to make when it comes to using the Patriot Act in non-traditional prosecutions (Banks, 2010). Agency safeguards to prevent violations should focus on methods to set limits in the use of intrusive methods for information collection, and there should be three primary safeguards put in place: 1. Comprehensive legislations, 2 Control mechanisms (executive and judicial), 3. Effective oversight. Comprehensive legislation should only be mandated in a last course of action once less invasive measure has been used and should be proportional to the nature of an offense. Control of information to protect civil rights must be implemented by internal controls of law enforcement linked with judicial authorization, such as a warrant. Effective oversight must consist of not solely depending on probable cause or the authority of a prosecutor, and this effort must be an executive of the high courts.

Emerging Policing

Over the next two decades, law enforcement will operate in a technologically advanced environment of considerable uncertainty, an era of persistent criminal activities using cyber and traditional criminal activity. his era will be characterized by protracted confrontation among the US, non-US nations individual actors using violence to achieve their political and ideological desired end states. Future technical criminals will rely less on conventional street craft methods and more on employing technical tactics that allow them to frustrate law enforcement without direct confrontations. Law enforcement will operate increasingly complex internet environments which severely restrict engagement based on constitutional rights or civil liberty.

Law enforcement will face a wide range of information operations threats from computer network operations to electronic warfare. Information Operations attacks may occur in the form of Computer Network Attack (i.e., hacking and/or malicious code) and Computer Network Exploitation (i.e., data compromise and/or manipulation) or as classic Electronic Warfare (EW), such as Electronic Support (intercept or direction-finding) or Electronic Attack (jamming or spoofing). Criminal elements may attempt to compromise and corrupt data, disrupt system operation, and physically destroy equipment. Additionally, law enforcement may be subjected to physical and weapons of mass destruction threats due to the homegrown terrorist.

Within computer network operations, the trusted US citizen may be the greatest threat. A trusted US citizen insider may be able to insert malicious code and extract, corrupt, or delete information. Trusted insiders are a threat throughout the entire lifecycle of the US government hardware and software. The use of commercial-based technology further increases the risk of malicious activity. Information about commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and government-off-the-shelf technology, including security and vulnerability features, is readily available from open sources.

Transition in Policing

The day to the activity of policing is not the same as it was two decades ago and not the same as the onset of the internet. Although police still have the responsibility of traditional policing of taking calls and responding to the constant deviant behavior of society, civil and private rights must be above approach. In exploring and anticipation of the emerging capability of predictive police analysis and intelligence collection of critical citizens information, we have miss lead the public and confused law enforcement on the true nature of predictive policing tentacles. The history of these new models of policing arrived from the procedures in which the United States conducted military action against the Soviet Union. The nature of battle was based on if the Russians would send one hundred tanks, and we will use airstrikes to counter their superiority of armor. These methods were in the place of how to fight and defeat an enemy since the end of World War II. Policing methods were in tune with using the exploratory method of the rule of law. Not until the Vietnam war did we see the first change in how unconventional war disrupted traditional policing of an adversary. Fast forward to the September 11, 2001 attack, both law enforcement and military were not accustomed to this method of criminal, terrorist, an ideology that combined both military and law response. On September 19, 2001, a team of four Special Forces personnel was given the task to assemble and develop a method of action to find, fix, and finish the threat domestics and international.

Our four-person team concluded that in order to deter this future activity, we must use a combination of law enforcement and military tools first to establish patterns, prevention, and predictions. The crime link tool that law enforcement was using provided an excellent method for cataloging unstructured data. However, mapping of this data was outdated, and geospatial representation of a map from an aerial view was new to police personnel. Although the full range of how predictive analytics cannot be displayed in this document, the primary focus was to protect individual civil rights afforded by the constitution. Multiple scholars have argued that the use of predictive analysis has violated our rights by collecting personal information from its citizens. Although there are rogue elements who have misused their access to sensitive data, the vast majority of investigators have stayed within the legal framework.

During our establishment of this new methodology, it was determined that the only source that we would use for data collection is open source information that the general public had access to. Opens source, typically known as OSINT, is defined as knowledge obtained from gathering and conducting predictive analysis processing and analyzing public data sources such as broadcast TV and radio, social media, and websites (OSINT, n.d). Once processed, patterns would show potential information in which lawmakers would use to decide if direct tracking of foreign or US citizens was warranted. Although the term predictive gets the public excited about individual rights, the primary intent was prevention. As a collaborative method for prevention, social media continues to provide pleather of open source information that is not in violation of civil rights. In 2001 the team objective was preparing a Technology Transition Plan that addresses all elements to be considered in transitioning the technology to the intended users. This plan will include information on the management of intellectual property, and an assessment of regulatory, security, export control, liability, and suitability information as well as a discussion of the strategy for transitioning the technology to production.

As an observation in reading the 9/11 terrorist attacks: A failure of policy, not strategic intelligence analysis. Marrin (2011) articulated that it is critical to emphasize the development of policies and enforcement of the individuals executing is not always continuous processes for the good of its citizens. Marrin's article tells the reader that the September 11 event has been studied and determined a significant failure from a tactical and strategic level (Marrin, 2011). The author explains that key leaders knew of the potential of the threat but neglected to influence their tactics, techniques, and procedures based on the assumptions that it would not have prevented an attack (Marrin, 2011).

Agency Safeguards

The establishment of the Constitution was not designed to modify when needed. It was put in place to protect the civil liberties of the citizens and to set the legal standards of how our newly formed democracy will conduct themselves. Although the Constitution is multi-facet with items such as a preamble, articles, and various amendments, the bounding rules have remained over time. The dilemma of technology comes to play in the same arena as the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act allows that law enforcement has the authorization to search and seize Americans' documents, listen to private conversations and effects without probable cause to aid in their investigation. As long as the people keep a vigilant eye on law enforcement activities, the federal courts don’t overreach its power, and the ability to challenge governmental conduct is a vibrant part of the American conversation, the risk of excessive violations on our fundamental liberties is minimal (McNeil, 2011).

Conclusion

The government has provided a mechanism for the citizen to have the confidence that their constitutional and civil rights are protected and is not being intruded on using social media to violate personal information. However, the threat of predators and criminal terrorist have threatened the foundation of our day to day life. For the safeguard, reasonable policies, procedures, and systems such as the Patriot Act have to be in place to stop attacks and prevent our resources from being overwhelmed (Homeland, 2016). Free speech and expectation of privacy are protected by the Constitution. However, some United States citizens have conducted homegrown terrorism that has resorted to loss of life. These actions are counterproductive in the fight against your civil rights and result in a nonproductive effect on the rule of law, good stewardship of governance, and constitutional rights (Terror, n,d).

The term intelligence collection is a term that indicates loss of rights in pursuit of government operations. Although it is a form of offensive operations, internet criminal activities have resulted in law enforcement mandates to counter crime. Predictive analysis using social media is a process of taking information to protect citizens from planned attacks. The misconception of intelligence collection is in fear of civil rights when in actuality, it is protecting public safety for event planning such as sporting events, concerts, political events, and freedom of movement. Either way, law enforcement has the responsibility to keep the citizens inform of their actions and provide transparency of their need to know of sensitive information. The justice department's early warning of threats provides confidence that there is minimum abuse of civil rights. Svendsen (2008) The globalization of intelligence since 9/11 explains that the police will need to learn how to collect and analyze intelligence from a globalization perspective (Svendsen, 2008). The author articulate that police will need to understand their constraints and operational parameters. Police will have to become familiar with the ideology based on a social media influence (Svendsen, 2008). Although the internet provides pleather of intelligence information, procedures still must show resistance from civil violations of the community (Svendsen, 2008). The information requirements of a given capability such as predictive analysis require measurable and testable characteristics and/or performance metrics to ensure the timely, accurate, and complete exchange and use of information. The system must have common communications to pass critical information to users or directly into intelligence or command and control channels.

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The Patriot Act: Protecting American Constitutional Rights. (2021, September 07). Edubirdie. Retrieved December 21, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/the-patriot-act-as-one-of-the-policies-for-constitutional-and-civil-rights-of-american-citizens/
“The Patriot Act: Protecting American Constitutional Rights.” Edubirdie, 07 Sept. 2021, edubirdie.com/examples/the-patriot-act-as-one-of-the-policies-for-constitutional-and-civil-rights-of-american-citizens/
The Patriot Act: Protecting American Constitutional Rights. [online]. Available at: <https://edubirdie.com/examples/the-patriot-act-as-one-of-the-policies-for-constitutional-and-civil-rights-of-american-citizens/> [Accessed 21 Dec. 2024].
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