9/11 to Now: Ways We Have Changed

By: Jason Villemez, Dalia Mortada , and Patricia Smith

On Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States, turning hijacked passenger planes into missiles and killing almost 3,000 people and injuring 6000 in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The attacks shattered America's sense of invulnerability and ushered in an ongoing battle with terrorists who, to this day, use random acts of extreme violence to push forth their radical Islamic views. Washington responded with a host of measures-many of them controversial-to protect the nation.

In the years that followed the September 11th attacks many facets of life and government in America were reshaped. Some of the changes were swift, some just temporary -- an immediate response out of concern for our safety -- while some proved to be more lasting transformations in American life. New government departments and agencies were established solely for the purpose of securing & defending our borders. 9/11 also changed the way we thought, the way we talked, and the way we traveled. Here are some of the ways American life has changed since the attacks on 911.

The American Vocabulary

The American lexicon, or vocabulary, was one of the things that changed drastically in the months and years after the attack. Among the words or phrases (9/11 being one of them) that entered everyday language: al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden, Taliban, ground zero, radicalism, extremism, anthrax, WMDs, The War on Terror and the Axis of Evil. Their usage dramatically increased and soon became part of Americans' everyday lives, or household words.

Airplanes themselves also underwent major overhauls: Fortified cockpit doors were introduced, and first-class cabin curtains were dropped by some airlines. Pilots can now apply to become a federal flight deck officer allowing them to carry a loaded gun and act as a federal officer aboard the plane.

In order to offset the added security costs, a "Sept. 11 fee" was tacked onto passengers' tickets, with the TSA collecting nearly $15 billion collected over nine years. Airlines also had to give some of their luggage-screening budget to help offset costs as well. Air carrier fee collections amounted to $2.9 billion between 2002 and 2010.

Government and the 9/11 Dilemma:

Freedom vs. Security

It’s been over ten years since the attacks and the United States is still struggling with the challenge of protecting the nation from another terrorist attack, without trampling the civil liberties that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Striking that balance “requires constant debate, and sometimes that debate is going to get loud and angry, and that’s a good thing,” says Clifford Mays, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

The debate has played out repeatedly in the last decade. The critical issues raised include:

· Can the government listen to our phone conversations and read our e-mails without warrants?

· Should suspected terrorists be held against their will without the right to a fair trial?

· How much power does the president have to search for and punish those accused of having terrorist ties?

Government agencies created after 911 include the Department of Homeland Security, which consolidated other agencies, including the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). According to The Washington Post, more than 263 government organizations were either created or reorganized following the attacks. The newspaper found that more than 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private companies do work related to counter-terrorism, homeland security and intelligence. Budgets for defense-related agencies also rose. The Coast Guard, TSA and Border Patrol budgets have all more than doubled since 2001.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, President Obama requested $68.9 Billion to fund homeland security activities in 2013; about half would be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security. It sounds like a lot, although since 9/11, the U.S. federal government

has spent more than half a trillion dollars on homeland security. This annual budget represents a mere fraction of one percent of the entire U.S. budget, which is currently at 3.8 trillion, ouch!

The stated high-level strategic objectives for homeland security,

according to the Congressional Budget Office website, are to: a. Prevent and disrupt terrorist attacks; b. Protect the American people, critical infra-structure, and key resources;

c. Respond to and recover from incidents; and d. Continue to strengthen the homeland security foundation.

Listening In?

Many security measures were authorized a month after 9/11, when President George W. Bush passed the Patriot Act through Congress, which expanded the government’s powers to conduct counterterrorism surveillance and investigations.

But during and after the congressional debate, civil liberties groups said that parts of the law infringed on constitutional rights. They objected to things like the government’s new power to check library records to see what someone had been reading.

In 2002, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the phone calls and e-mails of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans and others inside the U.S. suspected of terrorist ties, without first obtaining warrants.

When the program became public in 2005, a firestorm erupted. Opponents cited the 4th Amendment’s protection against “unreasonable searches and

seizures,” which has been interpreted to mean that authorities must obtain court-issued warrants before conducting wiretapping or other types of monitoring.

Bush argued the program was a legitimate exercise of presidential power. Security officials also cited concerns about situations in which delaying monitoring for a few hours while waiting for a warrant could result in the loss of critical intelligence that could stop an attack.

In March 2010, a federal judge ruled that warrantless wiretapping is illegal. And although the Justice Department had claimed the practice had been discontinued under the Obama administration, recent discoveries leaked by NSA whistle-blower and self-proclaimed patriot, Edward Snowden proved otherwise. Snowden was an American computer specialist and a former CIA and NSA employee who leaked details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to the press in May 2013. United States federal prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage, or spying, and theft of government property.

Immigration, Tourism and Deportations

The country with the most notable drop in visa issuance after 9/11 was Pakistan. In 2002, the number of tourist visas given to Pakistani citizens fell almost 70 percent and immigrant visas dropped more than 40 percent compared to 2001. It wasn't until 2008 that Pakistani immigrant and tourist visas to reach pre-9/11 levels. Egypt and Morocco also saw sharp drops in visas issued in 2002, though both have rebounded since.

International tourism to America fell for three years after 2001. Starting in 2004, it began to increase again, surpassing pre-2001 numbers in 2007. In 2010, a record 60 million foreign tourists visited. The number of Americans who traveled internationally also declined after 9/11, the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries reports.

Deportations as a whole rose by 104 percent from 2001 to 2010, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. The region with the highest deportation percentage was Central America, with a 430 percent increase, going from 14,452 deportees to 76,603. Asia saw a 34 percent rise in deportations, while Europe rose by 46 percent. Deportations for persons from Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan spiked in 2003, with Egypt showing the highest increase -- 205 percent.

American Muslims Anti-Islamic violence in America jumped after the attacks. According to the FBI, 28 hate crimes committed in 2000 were found to be anti-Islamic. In 2001, that number jumped to 481, and it remained above 100 in subsequent years.

Clinical psychologist Hisham Abu-Raiya of Tel Aviv University conducted extensive research on the aftereffects of 9/11 on American Muslims. Of those he surveyed, he found that a majority experienced negative events, such as verbal harassment and increased airport security checks.