Post 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

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On September 11, 2001, The United States of America and the whole world witnessed the most extreme terrorist incident ever committed on U.S. soil. It was perpetrated by Muslim extremists using commercial airliners as projectiles of destruction. The attacks on September 11, 2001 left nearly three thousand people dead. Following the attacks there was much speculation as to why these attacks were not prevented from happening. In the months following the attacks, President Bush assigned Attorney General Ashcroft the task of producing legislation to assist the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community to prevent such of an atrocity from occurring again. On October 26, 2001, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools…show more content…
Because of the fear of privacy invasion, the different federal agency databases were held on individual agency specific computer systems and were not accessible to anyone, but the owner. Having such a compartmentalized system did not give law enforcement nor intelligence the ability to assist each other in putting together potentially complex terror plots, and often the more sophisticated the terror plot, the more potential for mass killing (White, 2006). Communication is key in all parts of life, and especially important when dealing with such dire consequences. The USA PATRIOT Act, in Title VII, granted the expansion of information sharing systems in order to better facilitate communication between all agencies involved in counterterrorism. This called for the implementation of the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) as a central database for all law enforcement to use (USA PATRIOT Act, 2001). As seen in the above example, the purpose of the USA PATRIOT Act was to fill the holes and take the necessary measures to aid in law enforcements role in the fight against terror. I will briefly illustrate the provisions of the first five titles of the USA PATRIOT Act and explain and address the opposing viewpoints of this…show more content…
This legislation was introduced in a rapid fashion following the attack of 9/11. Because of this, it had some points of vagueness and left it open for misinterpretation. Organizations like the ACLU fed on this and released multiple reports demeaning the substance of the Act. In doing this, it introduced fear to the public that their civil liberties were being greatly compromised. In reality, the majority of the legislation is directed towards people suspected of terrorism. It gives law enforcement the tools to protect our country, to track and arrest those involved in terrorism. In my opinion, our law enforcement agency's record speaks for itself. It has been over seven years since the attacks on 9/11, and we have not had another terrorist attack of that magnitude on our soil. I am confident that the USA PATRIOT Act played an integral role in achieving that
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