These opening statements reflect fundamental, yet opposing, concerns in what has been one of the most important postmillennial debates for American democracy, the tradeoff between protecting national security and defending civil liberties. Though this debate has been evident since the dawn of U.S. history, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 raised its intensity to an unprecedented level, as the course of both foreign and domestic policy have been substantially altered. On the international front, these attacks led to protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the home front, and central to the focus of this book, the Bush administration pushed the USA PATRIOT Act (officially titled the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) through Congress on October 25, 2001, substantially expanding the government’s surveillance powers in ways that were unimagined at the time of its inception. Since that time, the law has been reauthorized twice, first in July 2005 and again in May 2011, with the key provisions now extended until June 2015. This law thrust the debate to the center of the American political stage, as policymakers, activists, and citizens considered the steps taken to prevent another terrorist attack.