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Fourth Amendment Speech

Decent Essays

Opening: Benjamin Franklin once famously said: “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.” I hope by the end of this speech you agree with this founding father. Because, that’s right, we are talking about the USA PATRIOT Act and the idea of freedom versus security, otherwise known as Hollywood’s go-to theme for the past decade. This is how I imagine how every conversation goes in every writers’ room in LA: “Hey, Mark?” “Yeah, Steve, what do you need?” “Well, I just can’t seem to make my superhero screenplay appeal to a modern audience.” “Hmm…Have you tried setting your story against the backdrop of a society conflicted by its own unstoppable spiral into an Orwellian hellscape?” …show more content…

In a 2007 article in Law and Philosophy, Alan Rubel states that Section 213 and Section 215 are some of the most controversially far-reaching.
1. Section 213, known as the “sneak-and-peak” search, is a provision that permits law enforcement agents to perform searches without notifying the subject of the search.
2. While, Section 215, known as the “gag-rule”, is a provision that allows subpoenas of various information to be handled covertly.
3. These are, quite noticeably, in direct conflict with the Fourth Amendment which is as everyone knows is “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
B. Furthermore, as Teresa Lucas states in a 2012 issue of the Idaho Librarian, Section 217 demands Internet Service Providers to hand over their client’s internet search history.
1. And what makes this detail worse is that it is everyone, not just suspected terrorists, that have their information stored in NSA data collection …show more content…

Simple: We repeal it. Just get it out of here. Turn the NSA Data Center in Utah into giant indoor mini golf complex. It will become the only reason non-Mormons visit Utah. Secondly, we need a new amendment guaranteeing our right to privacy.
A. As Oliver Diggelmann and Maria Nicole Cleis wrote in a 2014 article published in the Human Rights Law Review, the right to privacy has two distinct meanings: “privacy as freedom from society” and “privacy as dignity.”
1. Both of these would be protected under the umbrella idea of the “right to privacy” amendment.
B. However, in a 2015 article in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Andrei Marmor asserts that the right to privacy, while being a necessary human right, would not clear cut.
1. Which brings up the question: Do we want this amendment to be that broad?
2. In which, the answer is: Yes. We are Americans. We liked our constitutional amendments to be confusingly open-ended.
3. More importantly I want this amendment to be so broad that literally nothing impedes on privacy gets passed.
Proposal: The USA PATRIOT Act is a horrendous abuse of governmental power that violates rights usually guaranteed to American citizens. This act should be repealed and, additionally, elected officials should move to amend the U.S. Constitution to include a right to

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