Nancy Chang

About the author: Nancy Chang is senior litigation attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil liberties advocacy organization based in New York City.

The USA PATRIOT Act, passed hastily in October 2001, contains several radical measures that sacrifice political freedoms in the name of homeland security. The act creates a new, poorly defined federal crime called "domestic terrorism" that could be interpreted to include almost any opposition to government policies. The act also gives government agencies broad new license to evade the Fourth Amendment and invade Americans' privacy through electronic surveillance and covert searches of homes and offices. The reasoning behind the USA PATRIOT Act, which uses the narrowest possible interpretation of the Bill of Rights to justify homeland security measures, is extremist and likely to lead to further erosion of...