RJA #13b: Annotated Bibliography, Part 1

107th Congress. "H.R. 3162 In the Senate of the United States." Electronic Privacy Information Center N.p., 24 Oct. 2001. Web. 6 Nov. 2009 http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html.

This website provides a word for word copy of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. It has an index to help guide you to the section you are looking for.

This is a website that I have used in the past to do research on a particular bill or act and found it very informative and unbiased because it states only the facts. This page is an exact copy of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The reading can be somewhat difficult because the terminology used can be difficult to understand and very lengthy.

It is very long, therefore I use the option to download it in a PDF format so I could utilize the search option when searching for key words which is a must when some of these documents can be 100+ pages.


"Does the PATRIOT Act provide the government with overreaching power to conduct searches, surveillance's and wiretaps?." ProCon.org ACLU, 4 June 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. http://aclu.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=718.

This website is run by the ACLU and it gives viewers the opportunity to debate current or non-current issues. This particular webpage debates the validity of wiretaps and whether or not the government is extending its rights too far.

I liked this website that was suggested by my instructor and found it very valuable in terms of getting viewpoints from both sides of the issue. I believe the website to be accurate and truthful for a couple of reasons. First of all, the sponsor of the website is the ACLU which is an organization that acts somewhat as a governmental watchdog and is populated by more lawyers than every organization other than the US Senate and House. Secondly, the people who have posted their beliefs are particularly reputable like the Director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller and David Cole who is a professor of law at Georgetown. I believe that if these people were misquoted than something would have been done about it.

This source helped me to see the other side of my viewpoints and allowed me to rebuke the claims on that other side.


"Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." Electronic Privacy Information Center epic.org, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2009. http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/#Overview.

This is a website that summarizes Acts and Bills passed. This particular page covers FISA and recent actions taken regarding FISA that were in the news.

Again I cited a source from epic.org because of their factual nature of providing information. I liked this page because it provides several aspects of information on FISA. First of all it gives a summary of FISA in an outline format so it is a much easier read than the act itself. Secondly it provides information on the patriot act and how it differs from FISA and other acts regarding terrorism. Finally what I like the most is that it provides links to current news stories regarding the particular topic like what kind of reform is being sought.

I used this source to help me gather information for my paper. I also looked at the newsworthy articles that it also posted but did not use them for a source because I couldn't find any information I wanted to use.


Grey, Tully . "The History of Wiretapping." ehow.com N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2009. http://www.ehow.com/about_5382785_history-wiretapping.html.

This article is from a website that tells you about how things came to be and their history. Just about anything you want to learn how to do, how it became, or just more information about can be found on this website.

The author is a freelance writer and has been writing for 10 years, she has multiple college degrees from Columbia College. I consider her to be a good resource for the information I gathered from her which is the history of communicating. It seems that in writing this article she did quite a bit of research and compiled it into one page. I don't think I would look to her again for information given that her expertise is not relevant to issues I am concerned with.

I used this source just to give me some information about the background of my topic. It was helpful in doing so.