CITIZEN ADVOCACY CENTER  

 

POST 9/11 DUE PROCESS: THE USA PATRIOT Act

 

LESSON PLAN AND ACTIVITY

 

Grade Level: 7, 8

 

Subject(s):

 

Duration:  2 class sessions

 

Description: 

This lesson plan stimulates classroom discussion on issues of security and civil liberties.  The purpose of this exercise is to get students to understand that the line between liberty and security is not always clear, and that liberty and security are largely dependent on one another. 

 

 

Goals: 

ISBE Standards:

1.  Social Science

·        14A: Understand and explain basic principles of the United States government.

 

Objectives:

1.      Students will be able to define the terms liberty and security.

2.      Students will be able to explain the relationship between liberty and security.

3.      Students will analyze issues surrounding the USA Patriot Act.

Materials:

1.      Notebook paper/pen

2.      Blank overhead, whiteboard or chalkboard

3.      Copy of “The Freedom Balance: worksheet for each student

 

Instruction and Activities:

 

 

Activity One:  The Freedom Balance

 

For lecture:

 

In any government, there has always been a delicate balance between liberties and security.  

How do you define liberty?

How do you define security?

 

In the United States, liberties are those rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights as well as the more general liberty to live our lives how we want.  But we can’t always do whatever we want.  For example, I may get really angry and want to hit someone, but if everyone were allowed to hit each other when they got mad, no one would feel safe.  I am allowed to express my feelings about someone else, but going as far as hitting that person interferes with that person’s freedoms and right to feel secure in his/her own person.  This is part of the reason why we have laws against hurting other people.  When we feel safe, we also feel freer to live our lives and do things like ride the bus, go to the playground, or take a walk.  But at the same time, if we have too many laws for safety, we start to lose liberty.  For example, if the government can know everything about our lives to make sure everyone is behaving well, we lose some of our right to live our lives privately.

 

Tell me a place where you feel safe.

What makes you feel safe in those places?

 

Do you think that most people living in the United States before 9/11/01 felt safe like that? 

What happened on 9/11/01 that changed how people felt? 

            A:         Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and an attempted attack on either the White House or the Capitol Building.  The last attack was thwarted, and the hijacked plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

 

How did people feel when the 9/11/01 attacks were happening and shortly thereafter?

            A:         Scared, confused, helpless, angry, etc.  Most people wanted to know how these attacks could have happened;  how the government didn’t know about them in advance;  and how the government was going to protect us from these attacks in the future.

 

How did the government react to the 9/11/01 attacks?

            A:         Government officials were scared, confused, helpless, angry, etc. too.  One thing that happened in response to the attacks was that President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terrorism.” 

 

Who are we fighting in a war on terrorism?  What country?

A:         No specific country.  Terrorists come in every size, shape, and form, and from every country on the planet.  We did attack the country of Afghanistan.  Does anyone know why?

Because the leadership of Afghanistan reportedly supported the terrorists who attacked the United States.  Afghanistan also reportedly harbored Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the terrorist group Al Queda. 

The United States also attacked Iraq.  Does anyone know why that happened?

            A:         This one is a little bit harder to put our finger on.  There has never been a proven link between Iraq and terrorists.  The former leader of Iraq, Sadaam Hussein, was a dictator who was brutal to his own people.  The United States alleged that he kept Weapons of Mass Destruction – biological and chemical weapons that Hussein could have used against his own people or other countries such as the United States.  Weapons of Mass Destruction have not been found in Iraq.

 

What do terrorists look like?

A:         Good question.  Due to the terrorists on 9/11/01, most people think of terrorists as Muslim people from the Middle East with dark skin, eyes, and hair.  But what was the most recent terrorist attack on US soil prior to the 9/11/01 attacks?

A:         The Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing.  Who performed that bombing?

A:         Timothy McVeigh.  What did Timothy McVeigh look like?

A:         Blonde hair, blue eyes, crew cut, average American man.

 

Terrorists can be anybody.  That’s why it is so difficult for the police and the FBI to figure out who is going to do a terrorist act before they do it.  One of the tools that our representatives in government decided to use in this War on Terrorism is the Patriot Act.  The Patriot Act is a document that is hundreds of pages long that was passed in a matter of days after the 9/11/01 attacks.  Our representatives in government felt that they needed to respond to the outcries of Americans by passing the Patriot Act as a way to help catch people who are planning to commit terrorist acts against the United States, and to prevent another terrorist attack from happening again.

 

There has been a great deal of criticism of the Patriot Act since its passage.  It goes back to that balance between liberty and security.  Can you have liberty while maintaining security?  Can you have security and still maintain the liberties that are guaranteed to us through our Constitution?  Here are just a few provisions of the Patriot Act and executive orders that happened after the Patriot Act was signed.  You decide for yourself how they balance out of the Freedom Balance:

 

1.         The Bush administration has labeled some individuals as “enemy combatants.”  These individuals are alleged to be involved in or to have supported terrorist activities.  Enemy combatants can be held indefinitely without charge, without the right to an attorney, and are eventually tried by a secret military tribunal.  Under international humanitarian law (the laws of war), a criminal suspect cannot be labeled as an enemy combatant except where there has been direct participation in or connection to an international armed conflict.  President Bush’s executive order changes things so that individuals on US soil who are suspected of terrorist activities here can be labeled as enemy combatants. 

From what you know of the US Constitution, what parts of the Bill of Rights might be violated with this provision?

A:         The ACLU among other groups has attacked the administration’s use of the “enemy combatant” classification as violating the US Constitution’s guarantees to speedy trial, to be formally charged, due process, attorneys in criminal proceedings, etc.

 

2.         Throughout recent history in the United States, all non-citizens who were living in the US had to register with the government.  In the early 1980’s, the government admitted that no one was checking the registration cards for all of these immigrants so people stopped registering.  Why would you see this failure to register as a problem?

A:         Not know who is in the country, where they are in the country, and for what purpose.  People would come into the U.S. on a valid visa as a student, tourist, or as a worker.  Then, their situation would change, and their visas would not be valid anymore.  Because they did not have to register, and no one was keeping track of them, these individuals would slip into American society and fall between the cracks of the system.  This situation is what happened with several of the 9/11/01 terrorists.  The government had lost track of them within the country.

As a result, the government ordered all non-citizen males of Middle-Eastern descent to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to “register.”  Once there, many were detained and held in jails, without notice, for questioning regarding possible terrorist activities.

Do you see any Bill of Rights problems with this issue?

Again, what do terrorists look like?

A:         Again, they can be anyone.  These types of mass round-ups of one particular group of people raises equal protection concerns as well as concerns regarding speedy trial, to be formally charged, due process, attorneys in criminal proceedings, etc.

 

3.         How do you feel when you go to the library?  Do you feel like you could check out or look at pretty much exactly what you want to (with the exception of pornography)?  Outside of seeing whether your books are late, is anybody watching what you have been checking out to keep track of it? 

 

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI now has permission to search the records of libraries, bookstores, internet coffee houses, etc. for internet search records and book purchase/check-out records without a search warrant, and without informing you before or after the fact.

 

            How do you feel about that?

            Why would the government want to know what people are reading or looking at in the library? 

Why is that information important to the War on Terrorism?

Do you think that this provision of the Patriot Act cause any alarm when you look back to the Bill of Rights?

            A:         Due process, requirement of a search warrant, privacy, etc.

 

4.         Government officials listen in on conversations between jailed immigrants who are terrorist suspects and their lawyers.

 

            What rights are implicated here?

            A:         Right to confidential communications with your attorney; right not to implicate yourself in a crime.

           

            Why would the government want to listen to conversations held between a suspected terrorist and his/her attorney?

 

            Why would someone who is charged with a crime think that it is important to have confidential communications with his/her attorney?

 

5.         Immigrants who associate with certain religious organizations, charities, and churches are subject to investigation merely because they are members or are acquaintances with members of those organizations.  For example, Rashid, a 15 year-old boy, is a member of the local Muslim Youth Group.  The Youth Group is affiliated with the local mosque.  A cleric with the local mosque is critical of the US government, and states in a speech that he understands why the World Trade Center was bombed.  As a result, the government investigates the cleric and everyone who is associated with the mosque as member or employee, including Rashid.

 

            In order to investigate the cleric and others from the mosque, the FBI gets a search warrant to secretly go into the mosque members’ houses, search them, seize items of interest, and never tell the homeowners that they were there.  Another investigation technique allowed under the Patriot Act involves roaming wiretaps.  Prior to the Patriot Act, law enforcement needed to get permission from a local judge for wiretaps, and a specific warrant was required naming each phone that would be tapped.  Since the Patriot Act was passed, the FBI can get a warrant for a wiretap from a local judge.  That wiretap warrant will be good for the cleric’s home phone, office phone, cell phone, etc.  It will also be good across the country at a payphone used by the cleric when he is visiting a mosque there, or if he decides to move across the country.

 

           

 

 

Why would the government want this power to investigate Rashid or anyone else at his mosque?

Why would the government want these types of investigative powers?

Why would it be good for the government to have these types of investigative powers?

Do you see any problems with this scenario dealing with Rashid’s rights and the rights of other members of the mosque?  Remember, the only person who has done/said anything to make the government concerned is the cleric.

A:         Search and Seizure, Due Process, Right to know the charges against you, etc.

 

 

Activity

Pass out the Freedom Balance Worksheet.  Have the students work either individually or in small groups to try and categorize the words given.  The purpose of this exercise is to get the students to realize that the line between liberty and security isn’t always clear and that liberty and security are largely dependent on one another.  As future leaders of the country, they will have to balance liberty and security in looking at the Patriot Act as well as other proposed laws and government actions.

 

After students have completed the exercise, ask them these questions:

 

  1. Take a poll:  How many of you had trouble deciding which words belonged in the categories? Which ones were hardest to categorize?

 

  1. Why did you have difficulty deciding?

 

 

  1. Looking at how you categorized the words, do you see any relationship between liberty and security?  How are they similar?  How are they different?

 

  1. What do you think is more important in a democracy, liberty or security?  Why?

 

 

                        THE FREEDOM BALANCE

Instructions:

 

Look at the phrases and words below and decide if they represent liberty, security, or both.  For liberty, circle the word.  For security, put a box around the word.  If it is both liberty and security, underline.   Have a reason to support your answer.

 

 

DUE PROCESS         SEARCH WARRANT               WAR              ID CARDS

 

 

CENSORSHIP            DEMOCRACY                         SAFETY FROM HARM

 

 

DEFENSE                   PROTESTS                                GOVERNMENT

 

 

SPYING                      TERRORISM                            FREE SPEECH

 

 

JULY 4, 1776              CONSTITUTION                     LAWS

 

 

FBI                                EQUALITY                              POWER

©Copyright 2004 Citizen Advocacy Center.  All rights reserved.  No part of this lesson plan may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior, written permission of the Citizen Advocacy Center. The Citizen Advocacy Center is a 501(c)(3) non-pofit, non-partisan community based legal organization. For information about the Center, or to make a tax deductible contribution, visit www.citizenadvocacycenter.org, call 630.833.4080. The Center is located at 238 N. York Rd., Elmhurst IL 60126