The first 10 amendments of the Constitution, written by James Madison, known as the Bill of Rights contain much of our individual civil liberties and rights as citizens of the United States. The United States is known as a free country, where we have the liberty to our own personal freedom, an orderly government, as well as equality for everyone. However, above all else, freedom should prevail because without it, our civil liberties as citizens would be limited against the government and there would be no equality when each individual has no freedom.
Civil liberties are protections against government actions, some examples would be: right to privacy, right to free speech, and our right to freedom. Civil rights are actions that the government …show more content…
An instance would be, the Patriot Act that followed 9/11, which infringed upon many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, however were justified because they were a small sacrifice in order to protect the country as a whole. Although, there are many things ethically wrong with the Patriot Act, Section 215 was one of the most controversial sections when regarding our rights and liberties. Section 215, allowed the U.S. government to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, along with information about their daily personal lives, without any probable cause (End Mass Surveillance Under the Patriot Act. ). It allowed a blatant disregard for our freedoms as citizens by violating our freedom of speech by “prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy”(Surveillance Under the USA PATRIOT Act.). The government also began to have too much power, because they no longer needed a warrant to gather information on the millions of innocent Americans, which was also a violation of our fourth amendment “which says the government
Civil liberties are protections against government actions, some examples would be: right to privacy, right to free speech, and our right to freedom. Civil rights are actions that the government …show more content…
An instance would be, the Patriot Act that followed 9/11, which infringed upon many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, however were justified because they were a small sacrifice in order to protect the country as a whole. Although, there are many things ethically wrong with the Patriot Act, Section 215 was one of the most controversial sections when regarding our rights and liberties. Section 215, allowed the U.S. government to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, along with information about their daily personal lives, without any probable cause (End Mass Surveillance Under the Patriot Act. ). It allowed a blatant disregard for our freedoms as citizens by violating our freedom of speech by “prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy”(Surveillance Under the USA PATRIOT Act.). The government also began to have too much power, because they no longer needed a warrant to gather information on the millions of innocent Americans, which was also a violation of our fourth amendment “which says the government