Patriot Act Essay

The Patriot Act

The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George Bush on the 26th October 2001. The act is an Act of congress whose title is a ten letter acronym which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USA PATRIOT Act 2001). The Act was enacted 45 days following the September 11 attacks. The September 11 attacks on the world trade center in New York catalyzed the enactment of a legislation that would provide law enforcement with greater powers to investigate and prevent terrorist activities. The spirit of the act is founded on the notion of providing all that is required by law enforcement, within the limits of the constitution, to effectively combat the war on terror.

The main purpose of the Patriot Act is to punish and prevent terrorist acts within the United States and in the world. The Act also enhances the investigatory powers of law enforcement and accomplishes other purposes which include strengthening of the country’s measures in the detection, prevention and prosecution of international money laundering and financial terrorism schemes. The act gives law enforcement power to scrutinize foreign institutions, jurisdictions and classes of transactions or accounts that are vulnerable to abuse. It also strengthens measures aimed at preventing the use of the country’s financial systems for personal gain through corruption by foreign officials as well as facilitating the repatriation of stolen assets to the owners of such assets. Additionally, the act requires all financial service providers to report all elements of probable money laundering activities.

The Patriot Act made several changes to the laws that existed prior to its enac...

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...maintain a searchable database of registered sexual offenders and the department of justice links all these databases in a single searchable site that is available to the general public.

There have been some concerns about the registration and notification laws on sex offenders. Some of the concerns raised in respect to Megan’s law are the prospects of vigilantism when members of the community learn about the presence of a sex offender and decide to drive the sex offender out of the community or cause physical harm to the individual. There are also concerns that the availability of information has affected the re integration of sex offenders into the community as such information affects their employability status. Additionally, the costs used in maintaining the information required by Megan’s laws have increased exponentially and such costs may not be practical.