That to secure these rights, governments are instituted." After pleasing the reader with such a rousing, patriotic statement, the attorney general proceeds to explain all of the ways the US government can feasibly take said rights away from non-US citizens looking to enter into America. The act "allows law enforcement to use surveillance against more crimes of terror allows federal agents to ask a court for an order to obtain business records in national security terrorism cases [and] facilitates information sharing and cooperation among government agencies so that they can better "connect the dots."" Many other, more severe privacy-defying measures are outlined in the pending Patriot Act part 2, a daunting extension of the first version, which apparently didn't go far enough for Ashcroft. Did the framers of the Declaration of Independence intend to say that "governments are instituted" to secure the rights of only it's citizens, no matter what measures must be taken, even disregarding the rights of any outsider? Ashcroft seems to believe so.
A large focus of the PATRIOT act is on the idea of electronic surveillance. Many Americans, last decade, would agree that the government did not have the right to hold innocent people under surveillance as it is a direct violation of a person's inherent right to privacy so coveted by the people of the United States. In modern martial law fashion, the government has since disregarded such traditional sentiments, ignored the reasons why so many people want to come to the "land of the free" in the first place, and attempted to take the right to privacy away from millions of people. Proponents of the surveillance legislation believe that it is the only way to get under the fingers of the terrorists and combat the possibility of any more attacks. These supporters also maintain that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear being unjustly scrutinized because the law's most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off.