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9/11 Act

Act, the USA PATRIOT Act On October 26, Bush signed the act into law. State legislatures soon enacted similar antiterrorist legislation, through which, the war on terrorism expanded, most significantly at the state and local levels.
This new legislation severely curtailed civil rights and liberties. The detainees at
Guantanamo Bay is only the most prominent example of the administration's regulatory
Practices and new policies during its "war on terrorism." The detainees are not officially
On U.S. territory and the government argues that they therefore have neither constitutional rights nor the rights guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, the international treaty governing detention during wartime. Basic principles like due process, political freedom, and the rule of law were successfully circumvented under the new legislation. The Due Process Clause applies to all "persons" within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent. Yet, Section 412 of the USA PATRIOT Act exposes immigrants to extended, and, in some cases, indefinite, detention based on the attorney general's untested certification that he has "reasonable grounds to believe" that a no citizen is engaged in terrorist activities (Cole 2002:12). Proponents of the new legislation argued repeatedly that these restrictions will facilitate the prevention of new terrorist attacks. Careful observers, however, have claimed that the efficacy of these restrictions has been overstated. More than 1,500 people have been arrested since September 11 in the continuing investigation of that day's crimes. Not one of them has been charged with any involvement in the crimes under investigation. Instead many of them, while initially withheld from legal council, are being held on immigration charges.
While the detainees were frequently portrayed as possible "sleeper" terrorists by the mainstream media, little was known initially about the actual treatment and...