You wouldn’t want someone to be able to track your calls. You wouldn’t want someone to be able to look at your web browser history at any time. You wouldn’t want someone to monitor you text messages. So, why would you let the federal government do those exact things?

Not only does the government do this, but they do this, indiscriminately,  to all Americans. It doesn’t matter if there’s a warrant for your arrest, if you have a criminal record, or even if you’ve been a law abiding citizen your entire life.

This also goes against the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has been completely ignored for almost 15 years. The Fourth Amendment essentially ensures all Americans that their privacy will be protected and that the federal government cannot and will not look through your information without a warrant. This amendment was seemingly overturned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

This catastrophe began on Oct. 26, 2001, when President George W. Bush gave the NSA an unprecedented amount of unconstitutional power by signing the United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, more commonly known as the Patriot Act. This act was signed into law in response to 9/11, and while it may seem like a step in the right direction for our national security and the safety of the American populace, this is just simply not the case.

The Patriot Act went directly against the Fourth Amendment to our constitution by giving the NSA the ability to spy on each and every American’s phone records, data- just about anything. According to Slate, some of this includes, but is not limited to, tracking both parties of a phone call, including the location and time, spying on the cellphones of not only American citizens, but also the cell phones of foreign leaders, infiltrating text messages, checking web browser history, even hacking into the United Nations video conferencing system.

By the way, they are doing all of this indiscriminately to all Americans. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t ever been arrested, if there’s no warrant for your arrest, if you have a clean record, if you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. The NSA can, and probably has, looked into your private text messages and your web browser history. They have no warrant, they have no right to do this, yet this is being overlooked. This unconstitutional spying of each and every American must be put to an end.

Also, this is proven to not be effective whatsoever. According to NBC News, the NSA has stopped an incredible number of zero terrorist attacks under the Patriot Act’s spying. Instead, planned attacks or threats of attacks have been thwarted by the FBI and CIA, two very old and obviously very effective agencies. What this says is that the NSA’s spying is essentially a waste of the $10 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ hard-earned money, only there to build a false sense of security by collecting your data. In fact, the NSA has been caught lying about stopping terrorist attacks, as they stated that they had thwarted 54 terrorist attacks, which is simply not true, as reported by the Washington Post.

So, aside from being unconstitutional, ineffective and a waste of money, what else is there to be said about the Patriot Act? Well, rewind to December, when the tragic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California took the lives of 14 innocent civilians and injured 21 others. The entire attack was planned by the terrorists on their cell phones and online. You would think that a policy whose sole purpose is to stop terrorist attacks by spying on anyone and everyone would be able to stop this attack, wouldn’t you? The simple answer is yes, if they have all of these resources at their disposal, then they should be able to stop any terrorist threat that would come about in the U.S., especially with the Patriot Act being in place. You would also think that they could’ve stopped the Chattanooga shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing and many more attacks with these resources.

While on the subject of terrorist attacks, let’s look abroad. In France, which is said to have more robust security measures than the U.S. does under the Patriot Act, they were attacked twice last year, with the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the Paris attacks in November. In fact, according to The Guardian, most of the men that attacked Paris in November were known to be a threat by French security forces. This goes to show that even if the U.S. were to beef up the NSA, it still wouldn’t be able to stop these attacks.

The NSA’s illegal and unconstitutional spying under the Patriot Act on each and every citizen of the U.S. needs to be put to an end. Justifying the NSA’s actions, according to former congressman and two-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, is essentially the same as wanting a camera or policeman in every house to prevent domestic abuse. The longer the U.S. leaves the Patriot Act in service, the longer we will have strayed away from the freedoms that our founding fathers promised to us in the Constitution. As best said by Benjamin Franklin, “any society that will give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”