Ethics Assignment #3

The US Patriot Act was passed in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The goal of this act is to broaden the powers of law enforcement agencies and strengthen domestic security in order to identify and stop terrorists. I think it would be morally acceptable to break this law if a person was unreasonably searched under the Patriot Act. There were several instances in which service providers were issued a National Security Letter (NSL) by the FBI to gain customer records. Since the Patriot Act was passed it lowered the threshold for situations in which the FBI may issue the NSL. Before this act they had to give "specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the customer or entity whose records are sought is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." since the Patriot Act has been passed NSLs can be issued to request information that is "relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." this had led to the abuse of the power given to the FBI to issue NSLs to obtain information. Snowden's Moscow statement "asserting that existing NSA programs constitute 'a serious violation of the law', including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution." along with several people who were issued the NSL and have fought the gag order, the government is collecting and obtaining the records of it's citizens unconstitutionality and therefore it's acceptable to break those laws.