ABSTRACT
Political leaders tend to take extraordinary measures during times of crisis in the name of providing security. But after devastating terrorist strikes, democratic governments must resist the temptation to go too far otherwise, they play into the hands of the very same terrorists they set out to defeat. Terrorists want to change the behavior of the societies they attack. When they strike democracies, they want to scare their targets into weakening or abandoning their most esteemed values: Their respect for civil liberties and for human rights. Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that had vehemently opposed the post9/11 civil liberty curbs all along, declared the passage of the USA Freedom Act is a milestone. This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check.
