20 Years Later – The Legacy of The Patriot Act and the war on privacy

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.

Second World war internment camps of Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian origin, as well as McCarthyism were all mentioned, but in vain. Essentially, terrorists had scored a victory they likely weren't counting on: reactions to their actions were now dictating the fundamentally changing American "way of life."

Beside its content, another striking feature of Patriot Act - given its purpose, scope and potential for abuse - is how easily it got adopted by Congress, with only a handful of Republicans in the House of Representatives voting against, along with a lone Democrat in the Senate. Meanwhile, those questioning how the law came to be, what it means and how it was adopted, like filmmaker Michael Moore, got some legislators to freely admit that they didn't even read it before voting for it.
The key premise and promise of those pushing for the Patriot Act to be adopted was that people would enter into "a deal with the government" that would rob them of their privacy, but strengthen anti-terrorist protections and prevent another catastrophe like 9/11.

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