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Speak Out
How has your world changed in the decade since 9/11?
By John Vettese, Student Voices staff writer
A decade ago, two hijacked commercial airplanes struck targets in New York and Washington, D.C., and a third crash-landed in central Pennsylvania. The months and years following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2011, brought with them unprecedented changes in American life, from stricter immigration laws and increased concern about securing our borders to vociferous debate about how prisoners of war are detained by the U.S. military.
In all probability, none of those changes we just mentioned affected your life. You might not even have particularly strong memories of the day that started it all. Maybe it was another Tuesday morning, and your elementary school routine was interrupted only when you weren’t allowed to go outside for recess that week. Grownups everywhere seemed scared, and you tried to understand why.
But the changing America that unfolded afterward did trickle down to the individual level, and your world.
You’ve experienced it firsthand if you’ve ever flown. The Transportation Security Administration, a government agency formed after the attacks, gradually stepped up rules regarding air travel. First, passengers had to go through more thorough screenings before boarding – resulting in longer lines at security checkpoints. They were no longer able to carry on liquids or other items on planes, and had to put shoes and other personal items through X-ray scanners. Some passengers were selected at random for individual pat-down searches.
Last year, the TSA came under scrutiny for increasing the use of personal body scanners – including incidents in which a 95-year-old grandmother and a 6-year-old child were searched. Civil liberties advocates called the new measures the latest in a string of invasions of privacy, and a violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantee of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. TSA officials disagreed.
“I hope no grandmother would ever be a suicide bomber,” TSA Administrator John Pistole told the Christian Science Monitor. “[But] there have been two 64-year-olds who have committed suicide attacks. Where do you draw the line?”
The TSA has implemented a more recent program, the Los Angeles Times reports: engaging passengers in casual conversation at the security gate. They hope that these trained officers will be able to catch terrorists off-guard, through tics in facial expression and changes in the tone of their voice.
A more widespread but less noticeable change that might have affected your life involves the Patriot Act – the sweeping national security bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush just a month and a half after the attacks. It gave broad powers of surveillance and investigation to law enforcement agencies, from the federal level (FBI) all the way down to the local level (your city’s police force).
On your way to school, do you notice surveillance cameras in public places, monitoring for suspicious activity? Those might be there as a result of the Patriot Act.
As with the increased TSA powers, the concern about the Patriot Act raised by civil liberties advocates involves privacy. The Bill of Rights never mentions the word “privacy” – it is not spelled out as a specific, enumerated right. But the Supreme Court (in the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut) has recognized a “zone of privacy” based on the Third Amendment (privacy of one’s home), the Fourth Amendment (privacy of one’s belongings) and the Ninth Amendment (which served as a reminder that individual rights aren’t limited to the ones explicitly listed in the Constitution).
It’s possible that the Patriot Act is affecting your life without you realizing it. Much of the outcry over the law has surrounded monitoring of personal telephone calls and e-mails by the National Security Agency (another government department formed as a result of 9/11) in an attempt to thwart terrorism.
Does this mean that the government is eavesdropping when you talk on the phone with your best friend after school? Probably not. How about the e-mails you send to your older sister who is studying abroad? Maybe – the idea behind the expanded surveillance laws is to keep tabs on communications between U.S. citizens and people outside the country to make sure no potentially dangerous exchanges are being made.
The Patriot Act was passed under the Bush administration, but since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has signed extensions of some provisions in the law. Some states are trying to rein in these law enforcement powers; in August, the California General Assembly passed a law that forces police to secure a warrant before searching the contents of a cell phone, like text messages or recent calls.
These expanded laws regarding security and surveillance have changed American life, and whether it’s for the better or worse depends on whom you ask – or how you ask. A recent Associated Press poll showed that two-thirds of those surveyed feel “it’s fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism.” However, the same poll found that two-thirds also felt “the resulting policies are a mish-mash created in reaction to events as they occur, rather than clearly planned.”
What do you think?
How has your world changed in the decade since 9/11? Have any of the major changes – involving immigration or military rules – had any effect on your life? How about airport security rules; have you noticed these differences when you fly? Do you think these security changes are for the better or worse? Is the Patriot Act a good law to protect against terrorism? Why or why not? What do you remember of 9/11? How would you advise leaders to act in the next decade, and beyond, to prevent it from happening again?
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