Pro: Surveillance foils terrorist schemes

It couldn't have been easy for United States security officials to watch as America's preeminent symbols for global trade and militancy smoldered at the hands of a terrorist group.

Nearly 3,000 civilians lay dead, millions mourned and the entire nation awoke to a sickly new realization; we are vulnerable.

If they were to quell the hysteria at all, it must be made abundantly clear that the fateful collapse of the World Trade Center 10 years ago Sunday could not in any way be revisited.

And by more than just happenstance and prayers, it hasn't yet been.

According to a recent release by conservative research engine the Heritage Foundation, 40 known terrorist plots against the U.S. have been foiled since Sept, 11.

This success can be largely attributed to the swift creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of the Patriot Act.

In its nature, terrorism is a treacherously elusive pathogen; it breeds out of view from the authoritative eye, and nearly anyone is capable of it, and everyone susceptible.  

Under pre-Sept. 11 policy, terrorists had a major upper hand. Lax security at airports and limitations on investigators' abilities to track and hold suspects made it less of a challenge for ever-creative terrorists to duck and dodge the law.

But after the establishment of the Patriot Act, investigators had sharp, new tools at their disposal.

The 2002 apprehension of the Lackawanna Six demonstrates the Patriot Act's effectiveness. Without the open exchange of information between drug and counter-terrorism investigators allowed under the act, the six American-born citizens could have orchestrated another major onslaught equal to the devastation of Sept. 11.

Hundreds of similar suspects have been caught and convicted because of the act's provisions allowing much wider access to telephone and email communications, medical, bank and even library records than ever before.

Roving wiretaps, allowed under the Patriot Act, have also proved necessary in the pursuit of suspects who ditch phones and change emails regularly, which before would have required individual permission to track.

Yet despite the cries of civil libertarians, the practices allowed by homeland security are far receded from the lives of most all Americans. The only impingement most of us are exposed to is the heightened clearance at airports, a product of the Transportation Security Administration.

But while uncomfortable with some of the TSA's practices, district Police Services Chief Charles Gibson said it well: "I'd rather be patted down than blown up."

Homeland security's goal is not to invade or strip from one's privacy, but to allow counter-terrorism professionals modern methods for detecting threats.

It's likely that at least one of the 40 quashed plots since Sept. 11 could have been executed if it weren't for information obtained through the Patriot Act.

Ten years later, the act's success may be why President Obama felt the need to extend its major provisions for four more years this May.

While it is not exactly comforting to know that much of our private information is within close reach of government officials, don't count on them perusing your personal emails for thrills.

However, it is relieving to know that, in a time when technology has spawned limitless means for sabotage, our government is not just waiting idly by.