In recent days, Trump’s top aides have been pressing Congress to renew the federal government’s warrantless surveillance program authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That program helped Turkey find the suspect of a terrorist attack that killed almost 40 people in an Istanbul nightclub, the FBI said on Tuesday.
John Yoo — a former Bush administration lawyer who authored controversial memos that provided legal justification for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, on detainees — wrote in his 2006 book “War by Other Means” that Newstead was the “day-to-day manager of the Patriot Act in Congress.” He described her as “a quick study and an effective advocate — she went from zero to sixty on terrorism in the days after 9/11.”
Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Policymakers should be wary of “calls to restrict public access to or censor the Internet, or even — as some have suggested — to effectively shut down entire portions of the Web,” he said during a speech at Berkeley Law School. “Restricting the flow of ideas also inhibits spreading the values of understanding and mutual respect that offer one of the most powerful antidotes to the hateful and violent narratives propagated by terrorist groups.”
The Patriot Act was enacted following the September 11 attacks with the stated goal of dramatically tightening U.S. national security, particularly as it related to foreign terrorism. In general, the act included three main provisions: 1 expanded abilities of law enforcement to surveil, including by tapping domestic and international phones; 2 eased interagency communication to allow federal agencies to more effectively use all available resources in counterterrorism efforts; and 3 increased penalties for terrorism crimes and an expanded list of activities which would qualify someone to be charged with terrorism.
In 2005, this provision of the USA PATRIOT Act was used to prosecute Yehuda Abraham for helping to arrange money transfers for British arms dealer Hermant Lakhani, who was arrested in August 2003 after being caught in a government sting. Lakhani had tried to sell a missile to an FBI agent posing as a Somali militant.
Long title. An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and across the globe, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes. Acronyms (colloquial) USA PATRIOT Act. Nicknames. Patriot Act. Enacted by. the 107th United States Congress. Effective.
The Patriot Act was enacted in direct response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, as well as the 2001 anthrax attacks, with the stated goal of dramatically strengthening national security.
Title II is titled "Enhanced Surveillance Procedures", and covers all aspects of the surveillance of suspected terrorists , those suspected of engaging in computer fraud or abuse, and agents of a foreign power who are engaged in clandestine activities. It primarily made amendments to FISA and the ECPA; furthermore, many of the most controversial aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act reside in this title. In particular, the title allows government agencies to gather "foreign intelligence information" from both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens, and changed FISA to make gaining foreign intelligence information the significant purpose of FISA-based surveillance, where previously it had been the primary purpose. The change in definition was meant to remove a legal "wall" between criminal investigations and surveillance for the purposes of gathering foreign intelligence, which hampered investigations when criminal and foreign surveillance overlapped. However, that this wall even existed was found by the Federal Surveillance Court of Review to have actually been a long-held misinterpretation by government agencies. Also removed was the statutory requirement that the government prove a surveillance target under FISA is a non-U.S. citizen and agent of a foreign power, though it did require that any investigations must not be undertaken on citizens who are carrying out activities protected by the First Amendment. The title also expanded the duration of FISA physical search and surveillance orders, and gave authorities the ability to share information gathered before a federal grand jury with other agencies.
Wiretaps were expanded to include addressing and routing information to allow surveillance of packet switched networks —the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) objected to this, arguing that it does not take into account email or web addresses, which often contain content in the address information. The Act allowed any district court judge in the United States to issue such surveillance orders and search warrants for terrorism investigations. Search warrants were also expanded, with the Act amending Title III of the Stored Communications Access Act to allow the FBI to gain access to stored voicemail through a search warrant, rather than through the more stringent wiretap laws.
In general, the act included three main provisions: expanded abilities of law enforcement to surveil, including by tapping domestic and international phones; eased interagency communication to allow federal agencies to more effectively use all available resources in counterterrorism efforts ; and.
In 2004 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “the Patriot Act has proved extraordinarily beneficial in the war on terrorism and has changed the way the FBI does business. Many of our counterterrorism successes, in fact, are the direct results of provisions included in the Act…”
H.R.3162 – Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001. Congress.gov.
The Patriot Act is legislation passed in 2001 to improve the abilities of U.S. law enforcement to detect and deter terrorism. The act’s official title is, “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,” or USA-PATRIOT. Though the Patriot Act was modified in 2015 to help ensure the Constitutional rights of ordinary Americans, some provisions of the law remain controversial.
allowing law enforcement to use surveillance and wiretapping to investigate terror-related crimes. allowing federal agents to request court permission to use roving wiretaps to track a specific terrorist suspect. allowing delayed notification search warrants to prevent a terrorist from learning they are a suspect.
But a 2012 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation states 50 terrorist attacks have been thwarted since 9/11, with 47 being the direct result of the work of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They claim the Patriot Act is essential to helping law enforcement identify leads and prevent attacks.
allowing delayed notification search warrants to prevent a terrorist from learning they are a suspect. allowing federal agents to seek federal court permission to obtain bank records and business records to aid in national security terror investigations and prevent money laundering for terrorism financing.
allows the government to track suspected foreign terrorists for 72 hours after they enter the United States. increases required maximum penalties for anyone providing support to specific foreign terrorist organizations. allows limited use of bulk data collection under Section 215 in an emergency.
Section 215 requires that records collected be relevant to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. This 2006 ruling took the broadest possible interpretation of “relevant,” claiming that because of the NSA’s contact chaining (collecting data from numbers within two or three degrees of separation from the individual under investigation), all data collected by phone companies is potentially relevant. It was this verdict that authorized the NSA to demand mass phone data on millions of Americans from American telecommunication companies. In May of 2015 a federal court ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone metadata was in fact illegal, voiding the 2006 FISC verdict.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISC) was established in 1978 in order to provide oversight and prevent abuse of surveillance. FISC approves or denies petitions from intelligence officials who seek to enact surveillance inside the United States. However, in recent years observers have criticized the court for its lack of transparency. They say its definition of probable cause is not well understood, and critique the fact that there is no adversarial process present (i.e. that there is nobody in the court to argue against the approval of surveillance requests). Furthermore, they point out that in the 35 years that FISC has been active, they have approved 35,435 requests for surveillance and rejected only 12.
IMPACT: The “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001,” commonly known as the Patriot Act, was passed less than two months after September 11, 2001. The act greatly expanded the surveillance powers of the U.S. Government, allowing the National Security Agency to access phone metadata, authorize roving wiretaps, and detain individuals at the U.S. border. Congress has authorized the extension of certain portions of the act numerous times, however, as of December 2020, key provisions of the Patriot Act have expired.
The Patriot Act also expanded the maximum sentence for violating 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, also known as the “material support” statute, from ten to fifteen years. The USA Freedom Act (discussed below) then expanded it to twenty years in 2015. This statute was meant to target individuals who provide funds, materials, or training to terrorists. However, critics have called this law “new McCarthyism” and claim that it relies on guilt by association.They have argued that it leads to the prosecution of individuals participating in humanitarian relief, political advocacy, or human rights training. A 2011 study by U.S. civil rights organization Muslim Advocates points out that regulations like these make it especially difficult for Muslims to give zakat.
He wrote that he voted against the Patriot Act, “because of the cost it was asking the American people to pay in the form of their civil rights, particularly their privacy rights and especially for people of color. My fears on this front have come to pass over the past 20 years, and our country has yet to fully reckon with the discriminatory impact of the Patriot Act on communities of color.”
These warrants allow law enforcement to enter and search a suspect’s property without notifying them that the warrant has been enacted until months later.
Although not technically part of the Patriot Act, the so-called “lone wolf” amendment to the Patriot Act expanded the category of who can be considered an “agent of a foreign power” in a terrorism investigation. Whereas previous regulations mandated that any individual under investigation had to be proven to be “acting on behalf of a particular entity,” due to this amendment investigators can target any individual who “engages in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore,” whether or not they are actually agents of a foreign power. Note that this provision does not apply to citizens and legal permanent residents, and as of November 2019 it has never actually been used. In 2020, the House and Senate failed to renew this provision.
The USA PATRIOT Act modified many major U.S. intelligence, communications, and privacy laws , including: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act ( EPCA ), which modifies Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (the Wiretap Act ); the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ( FISA ); and the Communications Act of 1934.
the 2011 four-year extension of the "lone wolf" definition, authorization of "roving wiretaps" and "request for production business records" search authority.
L. No. 111-141; Feb. 24, 2010) was the mechanism that amends the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 to extend through February 28, 2011.
Section 214 of Title II of the Act prohibits the use of pen registers and trap and trace equipment in investigations that are based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment.
Because there is a greater potential for abuse using roving wiretaps compared to traditional wiretaps, which apply to a single telephone, Congress insisted on important privacy safeguards when, prior to the Patriot Act, it first approved this ""updated"" surveillance power for criminal investigations.
Rather, the Patriot Act is about making it easier to use FISA as an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. Myth: The Patriot Act's ""new powers have allowed authorities to charge more than 400 people in terrorism investigations since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and convict more than half."".
Section 206 also created ""John Doe"" roving wiretaps - wiretaps that need not specify a target or a device such as a telephone . The failure to include an ascertainment requirement, and the failure to require naming either a target or a device, is what is controversial about section 206 of the Patriot Act. Congress ""updated"" the surveillance ...
Because these problems resulted from a misunderstanding of the law, not the law itself , the Patriot Act is not the reason for improvements in information sharing. FISA information, properly obtained for foreign intelligence purposes, could always be shared with criminal investigators if relevant to crime.
The primary effect of the Patriot Act was to remove necessary checks and balances in foreign intelligence investigations.
Before the Patriot Act, the government could use the same tools, such as wiretapping or using grand jury subpoenas, to investigate drug dealers and terrorists. The government simply had to be investigating a crime of terrorism.
Reality: The Patriot Act's ""sneak and peek"" provision is about lowering standards for sneak and peek warrants, not imposing uniformity. The two circuit courts that upheld the use of delayed notice warrants imposed a very similar rule, including a presumptive seven-day limit on delaying notice. Delayed notice search warrants, or ""sneak-and-peak"" ...
The USA PATRIOT Act has generated a great deal of controversy since its enactment.
Opponents of the Act have been quite vocal in asserting that it was passed opportunistically after the September 11 attacks, believing that there would have been little debate. They view the Act as one that was hurried through the Senat…
The Patriot Act was enacted in direct response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, as well as the 2001 anthrax attacks, with the stated goal of dramatically strengthening national security. On October 23, 2001, U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner(R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the mo…
The USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized by three bills. The first, the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005, was passed by Congress in July 2005. This bill reauthorized some, but not all, provisions of the original USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the newer Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. It created new provisions relating to the death penalty for terrorists, enhancing security at seaports, new measures to combat the fin…
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Civil Contingencies Act 2004
• Combat Zones That See
• Data mining
• Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003
• Chesney, Robert M. "The Sleeper Scenario: Terrorism Support Laws and the Demands of Prevention". Harvard Journal on Legislation (2005).
• Gouvin, Eric J. (2003). "Bringing Out the Big Guns: The USA PATRIOT Act, Money Laundering and the War on Terrorism". Baylor Law Review. 55: 955. Archived from the original on September 7, 2004.
• "The USA PATRIOT Act", the full text
• H.R. 3199, Bill Summary and Status Archived February 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
• "The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty" by the Department of Justice
• The Patriot Act and Related Provisions: The Heritage Foundation's Research