Title: THE PATRIOT ACT, TERRORISM & THE BILL OF RIGHTS | Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility
Headings: THE PATRIOT ACT, TERRORISM & THE BILL OF RIGHTS
THE PATRIOT ACT, TERRORISM & THE BILL OF RIGHTS
To the Teacher:
An Opening Exercise:
Mohammed, the FBI, and You
For discussion:
Reading 1:
The Patriot Act and some of its controversial provisions
For discussion
Reading 2:
Other issues raised by the Patriot Act
For discussion or writing
For further inquiry

Content: As Joan Airoldi concluded in her article, if the FBI had not dropped its request, I "would not have been able to tell this story." ( USA Today, 5/18/05)
The Patriot Act is a lengthy, detailed, and, in its language, difficult law to understand. Passed after the 9/11 attacks shocked Americans into an understanding of how vulnerable the U.S. is to terrorism, the law permits a range of governmental actions that invade individual privacy, often in secret ways: to monitor e-mail and voice-mail messages; to gather personal information and records from doctors, libraries, banks, and other institutions without having to demonstrate to a court any evidence of criminal behavior; to obtain nationwide search warrants and search homes without immediately informing residents; to imprison non-citizens without charge and indefinitely; to deny a foreigner entry into the U.S. without any explanation; to freeze the financial assets of an organization without producing evidence it has done something wrong. Sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to "sunset" this year.