As America is approaching the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on its soil, many are also taking the time to once again consider another calamity of a different kind that followed close on its heels and is also 20 years old – the enactment of the Patriot Act by the George W. Bush administration.
This piece of legislation, fast-tracked through the Senate while both the legislators and the public were still reeling from the tragic events of September 11, has profoundly influenced and reshaped the way the US law enforcement approached and executed its suddenly expanded mass surveillance powers, at the same time ending the notion of privacy, in particular online, as people in the US had known it. Civil liberties, the rare voices opposed to the Act were saying, would be undermined for nothing, as history shows in various similar cases of throwing them under the bus for supposed increased security.
