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Common Core State Standard
SL.CCS.1/2/3/4 Grades 6-12: An essay of a current news event is provided for discussion to encourage participation, but also inspire the use of evidence to support logical claims using the main ideas of the article. Students must analyze background information provided about a current event within the news, draw out the main ideas and key details, and review different opinions on the issue. Then, students should present their own claims using facts and analysis for support. FOR THE WEEK OF NOV. 21, 2005 Your privacy vs. your protection shapes the debates as the Patriot Act comes up for renewal![]() ![]() The Patriot Act is over 300 pages long while the Fourth Amendment is only 54 words long. Have students look up the actual words that comprise the Fourth Amendment and list how many times the word "privacy" appears in the amendment. Then have them explain how the spirit of the Fourth Amendement addresses privacy. ![]() Split the class in two and stage a debate on the need for the government to gather information to fight the war on terrorism vs. the protection of privacy. ![]() Ask your students to watch their newspapers for upcoming reports on further Patriot Act negotiations, debates in the Congress about its revisions and the final vote on renewing the act. Have them check especially on the position their local representatives to Congress takes on the issue and the reasoning those representatives give for how they vote. Suppose you -- an innocent and patriotic American -- happened to have used a particular computer in a Connecticut library not so long ago. Here are some of the private details about you that the FBI now knows: What you buy online, what you borrow, where you travel, what you search for and read on the Web and who telephones or emails you in your own home or at your workplace. And because of a Justice Department decision in 2003, all of that information gathered about you no longer is destroyed when investigators determine that you are innocent of any terrorism connections. What's more, because of an executive order issued last month, access to that information about you, now is prey to "state, local and tribal" officials and to "appropriate private sector entities." The order does not define the private sector entities. Welcome to the USA Patriot Act -- and its most controversial tool: National Security Letters, the device that enables the government to gather all of that information about you. Furthermore, the law keeps it a secret from you that such information has been gathered -- and forbids the person required to hand over that information about you ever to speak of the matter. The Patriot Act originally was adopted by a shaken Congress 45 days after 9/11, and now is up for renewal before it expires Dec. 31. Last week the House and Senate reached a compromise version of some changes to the law, and supporters hoped to win approval of the measure before the Thanksgiving recess. But a bipartisan group of senators and representatives worried about civil liberties managed to stall a final vote and some have threatened to filibuster it until more privacy safeguards are guaranteed.
Front Page Talking Points is written by
Alan Stamm for NIEonline.com, Copyright 2024
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