Introduction
The September 11 th, 2001 terror attacks in the USA have a significant impact on the American social fabric and way of life including in the criminal justice system. Part of this change was the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was promulgated in October, a few weeks later (Twomey, 2018). The instant law impacted various components of the criminal justice system with its most significant provision being Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures that relate inter alia to cybersecurity. Through its Title II, the USA Patriot ACT dramatically increases the overall power and scope the government has in obtaining warrants and information from electronic devices.
Cyber Law
What is Cyber Law
Cyber law, also called cybercrime law or information technology law refers to a set of laws that regulate acceptable behavior on the internet. These laws became necessary towards the end of the 20 th century as online activities mounted around the world. The increase in internet activities resulted in a rise in criminal activities on online platforms. Initially, such activities involve financial crimes and using the internet to coordinate criminal activities. With the rise of social media, online crimes have expanded to include online bullying and the transmission of criminal content. Cyber laws seek to regulate conduct that is acceptable online, provide modalities for investigating cybercrimes, and punishment for those who break applicable laws.
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A brief history of Cyber Law
Some elements of cyber laws precede the advent and proliferation of the internet, while the bulk of these laws have evolved gradually alongside changes in the internet. One of the fundamental components of cyber law is Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which protects freedom of speech on all platforms. Article 19 dates back to the 1940s before the advent of the internet but it remains a fundamental component of modern cyber laws. Most modern cyber laws involve a modification of the rights enshrined in Article 19 as outlined above. Such laws include the application of Katz v United States , 389 U.S. 347 (1967) which forms the basis of a reasonable expectation of privacy (Twomey, 2018). Between 1967 and the current times, congress has enacted a cascade of laws either limiting or increasing the surveillance capabilities of law enforcement.
How Cyber Law can Affect Everyone
As early as the end of the 20 th century, the internet had extended to mainstream usage in America. The mainstream usage of the internet increased in the first decade of the 21 st century, more so with the advent and proliferation of the smartphone. Almost every American above the age of 10 uses the internet and is thus affected by cyber laws. The impact of cyber laws on everyone has two dimensions. On the one hand, the internet protects all users against cybercrimes. On the other hand, internet use creates liabilities for all users
USA Patriot Act
Events that were the cause of the USA Patriot Act
Almost all modern laws are acts of Congress and have a direct connection to a social-political issue. The USA Patriot Act, an authoritarian law that would erstwhile have been unfathomable in a nation considered as the free world has roots in the September 2001 terror attacks in New York City and Arlington Virginia. During the attacks, terrorists associated with Al Qaeda hijacked domestic flights in America and rammed the jet in the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington. These attacks led to a loss of life but also a massive psychological impact on the American public. The said psychological impact led the US Congress to almost unanimously enact the Patriot Act with the full support of the American Public.
The Impact of the USA Patriot Act
The USA Patriot Act reversed or extinguished the protections provided to internet users against the excesses of government through law enforcement. The most significant laws relating to internet use at the rise of the century were the Fourth Amendment, the precedent set in Katz v United States , the Privacy Act of 1974 and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1977 (Dixon, 2016; Hu, 2018). Due to these provisions, law enforcement actions that intervened on the privacy of internet users required court issued warrants subject to probable cause. Under the Patriot Act, government agencies got a free hand to collect and analyze cyber data from any citizen with neither probable cause nor issuance of a warrant. In its initial form, the Patriot Act eliminated almost all rights of privacy on online platforms.
How the USA Patriot Act can Affect the Citizens
One of the impacts of the Patriots Act was allowing the NSA to tap electronic systems in the USA, collect vast amounts of data, analyze and store it. The impact of NSA wiretaps as a general erosion of private in the USA (Stoycheff, 2016). Currently, government records for millions of private conversations exist in the USA (Harvard Law, n.d.). The existence of such records creates a chance of their exposure and release to the detriment of private citizens. With the current prominence of social media, there is a substantial risk of exposure for almost every American of majority age.
What parts of the USA Patriot Act are Efficient
From the perspective of cyber laws, the most significant portions of the Patriot Act is Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures. This is the segment that relates to surveillance on electronic systems. Initially, Congress set the law to last for four years with a sunset date in 2005 (Harmer, 2017). However, the sunset date was procrastinated through acts of Congress repeatedly, with some components remaining in force. Therefore, the USA Patriot Act ends as it was initially planned.
Proposed Changes that could've been made to the USA Patriot Act
Are Those Changes Possible and Still be Effective
There have been several changes to the Patriot Act, through litigation and acts of Congress. Some of these changes date back to the initial phase of the Act, at the height of the war on terror. Despite these changes, there has been no similar terror attack like the one dubbed 911. Based on the above-proposed changes to water down the impact of the Patriot Act are sustainable.
What can be Changed
The impact of the Fourth Amendment on the criminal justice system in the USA is part of the reason America earned the title of the Free World. Under the Fourth Amendment, every breach of the right to privacy requires the acquisition of a warrant based on probable cause rules (ACLU, 2020). The Patriot Act should be Amended to effectuate this rule.
What cannot be Changed
The role that cyber networks played in 911 and subsequent terror attacks in the USA and around the world cannot be overstated. Components of the Patriot Act that prevents the use of the internet to coordinate terror activities or to incite the kind of animosity that breeds terrorism should be retained (Dixon, 2016).
Conclusion
Based on the research and analysis above, the Patriot Act was a knee-jerk reaction to the 911 terror attacks. Congress enacted the substantive law with monumental repercussions to individual privacy in America within a few weeks of the 911 attacks. Almost two decades later, the law, which was meant to last until 2005 continues to infringe on the individual rights of Americans and should be reviewed.
Reference
ACLU (2020). Surveillance Under The Patriot Act. https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/surveillance-under-patriot-act
Dixon, P. (2016). Surveillance in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, and the Law [2 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, and the Law . ABC-CLIO.
Harmer, J. M. (2017). Is Internet privacy dead? Recovering Internet privacy in an increasingly surveillant society (Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds).
Havard Law (n.d). Effect Of The Usa Patriot Act On Internet Privacy. https://cyber.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Module%20V.htm
Hu, M. (2018). Cybersurveillance Intrusions and an Evolving Katz Privacy Test. Am. Crim. L. Rev. , 55 , 127.
Stoycheff, E. (2016). Under surveillance: Examining Facebook’s spiral of silence effects in the wake of NSA internet monitoring. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly , 93 (2), 296-311.
Twomey, W. (2018, August). A History of Privacy Rights in America: From the Fourth Amendment to the Patriot Act. In Colloquium: The Political Science Journal of Boston College .
