For over two centuries American citizens have bided by the first 10 commandments in the United States Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights, for protection over their personal liberties from the United States government. These personal liberties include, but are not limited to: The freedom of religion, speech, and press, the protection of privacy, and the right to life, liberty, and property. These personal liberties protected by the government, from the government, have always been strictly enforced with no unknown territory. That is until approximately three decades ago when the Internet was created. Over the last twenty-seven years technology has been quickly advancing creating an unknown world of the Internet and …show more content…
While the United States has very little government regulation over the Internet compared to other countries, such as china, the United States government has made it a requirement for schools and libraries to use an intermediary software to filter the content available to minors. While these intermediaries restrict access to websites regarding child pornography, which is not a protection of the first amendment, there is also legislation pending to restrict access to social networking websites, which are considered protected by the First Amendment (Kreimer 22). White refers to the case United States v. American Library Association, which refers to the requirement of a software on computers prohibiting children from viewing anything that is harmful to them, such as pornography. The court ruled, adults still have the ability to view such sites if they ask a library official to remove the website from the blocked list, and therefore does not go against First Amendment liberties. However, the judge also said, “until a blocked site or group of sites is unblocked, a patron is unlikely to know what is being hidden and therefore whether there is any point in asking for the filter to be removed” (White 2009). White believed due to this statement alone, the individual’s rights of speech have been restrained prior to their knowledge (White 2009). The Internet involvement in the USA Patriot Act has also caused a negative impact on the personal
Technology has become very effective for a thriving generation, but it also possesses a handful of flaws that counter the benefits. Technologies help people post and deliver a message in a matter of seconds in order to get a message spread quickly. It also gives individuals the power to be the person they want to be by only showing one side of themselves. But sometimes information that had intentions of remaining protected gets out. That information is now open for all human eyes to see. This information, quite frankly, becomes everybody’s information and can be bought and sold without the individual being aware of it at all. However, this is no accident. Americans in the post 9/11 era have grown accustomed to being monitored. Government entities such as the NSA and laws such as the Patriot Act have received power to do so in order to protect security of Americans. However, the founding fathers wrote the fourth amendment to protect against violations of individual’s privacy without reason. In a rapidly growing technological world, civil liberties are increasingly being violated by privacy wiretapping from government entities such as the NSA, Patriot Act and the reduction of the Fourth Amendment.
Is privacy implied in any of our Constitutional amendments? Where? First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment
In the year of 2017, it is hard to find any person whose life does not revolve around their electronic devices. The Internet has changed the way people function, and become a crucial resource in schools, workplaces, and homes all over the world. There are people who feel they could not survive a day without it, and, of course, there are people who are wary of its dangers. Children are taught from a young age to tread carefully when using the Internet, and teenagers can recite lectures they have received from their parents time and time again: “Don’t talk to strangers,” “Be careful what you download,” and most importantly, “Never share your personal information online.” What most of these parents do not know, however, is that you do not have to share your personal information for it to be collected. Not only is your information collected without your consent—it can legally be used against you. Many statutes involving Internet surveillance were rudimentary and non-invasive at their creation, but on October 26th, 2001, everything changed. The Patriot Act was signed into law, just forty-five days after the horrifying terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. The USA PATRIOT Act, more commonly known as the Patriot Act, was not a single piece of legislature, but a package of amendments to preexisting laws. The most notable changes in the Patriot Act are the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1968 (ECPA),
The U.S. Constitution was a set of fundamental laws and certain rights that each American citizen was meant to live by. The Constitution was signed by delegates during the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. The constitution was created because many belived that the current governing document (The Articles of Confederation) were weak and allowed the states to operate like independent countries. At the Constitutional convention, the delegates created a plan for a stronger federal government that included three branches–executive, legislative and judicial. They also included the system of checks and balances to ensure no single branch would have too much power. The Bill of Rights–10 amendments guaranteed basic individual
Contraceptives are widely used throughout the United States in today’s age and age, but in the early 1950s, Connecticut and Massachusetts were the only states in the union that still had anticontraception policies such as the 1879 Connecticut statute prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives (Johnson 6). Estelle Griswold accepted a job as executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and began a fight to give access for women to use contraceptives legally. It was very predictable the verdicts for the lower court cases during Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) as many judges took the side of the 1879 precedent. However, by the time it reached the Supreme Court, the main issue focused was the right to privacy which
While all the Court Justices in Griswold v. Connecticut agreed that the legislation prohibiting the use of contraception was purely irrational, Justices Douglas and Black differed with the Court’s judgment about the case decision. Justice Douglas expressed the majority’s opinion in which he stated that the Connecticut law that banned the use or supply of contraception was unconstitutional because it failed to obey the “right to privacy” derived from certain privacy rights listed on the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, Justice Black disagreed with Justice Douglas by stating that the rights enumerated by Douglas were a mere implication of privacy and that the “right to privacy” didn’t reflect anything stated directly on the Constitution.
Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy once said, “ Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”(“John,” p.1). Indeed, throughout the course of history of United States, peoples’ liberty has been established as the most important aspect of American people. Liberty is understood as a basic right of freedom in which everyone can engage without control or interference by a government or other power. Based on that principle, Selective Incorporation is a process of constitutional law in which some provisions of the Bill of Rights are nationalized to the states through the Fourteenth
In the United States, citizens have rights, and the United States Constitution guarantees these rights. The Bill of Rights states the basic liberties of the people of this nation in the first ten amendments in the U.S. Constitution. However, these liberties can be met with denied liberty, while sacrificing freedom, as people live in fear threatened by racism, religious beliefs, police brutality, invasion of privacy, and the horrific terrorism acts on United States soil.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution implementing each of the Amendments, it was in hopes of truly making the United States “the land of the free and home of the brave”. This was for everyone including minorities. At the time of making the laws of America, the founding fathers never knew that the overwhelming issues of slavery and unequal rights would have overtaken the United States of America, even so much that it still exists today. Even leaders who also had hopes of seeing equality in America like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Advocates for Women’s Rights to vote risked their lives in hopes of taking America from a one minded country to a fair minded country.
“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. This statement is part of the Second Amendment in the United States that shows American citizens have an authority to own a gun legally to protect themselves. Since the United States was founded in 1776, this nation has grown up connected to firearms. After wars such as World War I and World War II, war industries led the United States to become one of the powerful nations in the world. Nowadays, this nation is the most influential and powerful country in the world in terms of culture, economy, society, military, and even war. It is not too much to say that today’s world is following the
Most people believe that they deserve the rights they are granted by the government. A prime example of this is the right to do what you want with your body, as long as you don’t hurt anybody else. This is considered a basic human right and is provided for in the constitution. One example of where you should be able to do whatever you want with your body is prostitution. The government always has too much power over our health. It can draft us and make us go into internment camps like the Japanese in WW2. It certainly shouldn’t say whether or not we have the right to pay for sex with a consenting adult.
Here in America, people have the right to protest and speak their views granted by the first Amendment in their Constitution. Reading or watching the news lately, there are a lot of protests happening. People are gathering and protesting so many different things all over the world right now and America is no different. However, what the media shows in America are arrests of protestors by security and police, both of which attack them at times, using pepper spray and other brutal methods. How is this behavior allowed? Pauline Maier sums up what the issue at hand is, “The affection with which Americans regard the three “founding documents” of the United States has not been constant over time.” (Maier pg3). American protestors are at times fighting for equal rights as equal citizens. While many others are asking for justice due to corruption in Wall Street, Banks, and American Government; however, the people who don’t hold affection for the first Amendment have been shown in the media as an increasingly violent force against those who support it. Should people be allowed to protest regardless of their cause, and without any execution of force unless provoked? I believe they should have this right and be guaranteed safety in acting on it. With these ideas in mind, America’s first Amendment is being contradicted by US government authority and private authority figures because these same people have enacted numerous assaults on people using their first amendment rights.
constitutional rights. Prison is not a fun place to be even for the most harden criminals, and a correctional system is not an arena for solving the underlying causes of crime. Some states are facing severe budget cuts due to economic struggles and drops in tax revenues; therefore, not all prison facilities in the United States could offer rehabilitation, education, mental health services, and sanitary cells for convicted offenders.
Initially, we as the people of the United States are believed to have the freedom and liberty we seek for. This is obtained through a list consisting of ten amendments created by the government whom named it the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is a generally most common name used to describe the rights and laws that we, the citizens of the United States have. It is the basic foundation in which gives us the freedom of speech, freedom of press, and etc. Without it, the people for instance, would be accused of a crime and put in prison without any word or consent. They would not be able to prove their case that they’re innocent and would have to tolerate with the judge’s irrational decisions. So, the question is, to what extent has our government
Many people are not aware of their own rights, let along the fact that there are rights for victims. Before this class, I knew of a couple rights for victims, but not very many. I was uneducated in this area. For a long period of history, victims’ rights were not recognized, because they were not seen as necessary. Now there are thirty-two states that have added an amendment to their state constitutions including the rights of victims. However, these laws are not perfect. They do not apply to all victims of all crimes, and they do not always specify at what point after the crime these laws go into affect. In fact, only about half of the country affords rights to all victims, regardless of the crime. This number is too absolutely too low, but because people in general are unaware of this, there is no movement for change.