It was this verdict that authorized the NSA to demand mass phone data on millions of Americans from American telecommunication companies. 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. Section 215 requires that records collected be relevant to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. In 2006, a secret ruling by FISC drastically changed the NSA’s interpretation of Section 215. Instead of being limited to the businesses and organizations listed above, FBI agents could request an order from FISC that requires any organization to produce “tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items).”
Section 215 vastly expanded the kinds of information that agents can request over the course of their investigation. The most controversial part of the Patriot Act is Section 215, also known as the “business records” provision. However, the agency “may consider activities such as participating in a public rally, attending a particular place of worship, expressing political views on the Internet, or buying a particular book - as long as those activities are not the exclusive basis for the agency’s assessment.”
The Patriot Act mandated that First Amendment protected activities (assembly, speech, practice of religion) are not allowed to be the “ sole basis” for being targeted for surveillance. 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. that there is nobody in the court to argue against the approval of surveillance requests). They say its definition of probable cause is not well understood, and critique the fact that there is no adversarial process present (i.e. However, in recent years observers have criticized the court for its lack of transparency.
FISC approves or denies petitions from intelligence officials who seek to enact surveillance inside the United States. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISC) was established in 1978 in order to provide oversight and prevent abuse of surveillance. These previous limitations on surveillance were initially put into law in response to COINTELPRO, the FBI’s counterintelligence program that surveilled, infiltrated, assassinated, and attempted to discredit many domestic Civil Rights and political groups particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Black, Indigenous, Latinx, communist, and anti-war groups groups. For example, FBI agents could only demand records from “entities that count as common carriers, public accommodation facilities, storage facilities, or vehicle rental facilities.” Additionally, they could only request information that directly concerned the target of their investigation, not on people they had come into contact with. government was limited in the individuals it could target for surveillance and the kinds of information they could request about them.
Representatives and Senators admitted after its passage that they had not even read the bill before voting on it.Īccording to scholar Geneive Abdo, the Patriot Act “In theory applies to all citizens, but it was written with Muslims in mind and in practice denies them their civil liberties by empowering law enforcement authorities to raid their homes, offices, and mosques in the name of the war on terrorism.”īefore the passage of the Patriot Act the U.S. Introduced only three days before, the bill passed with little discussion - the usual process of public hearings, markups, and floor debate was “bypassed almost entirely.” Many U.S. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 was passed on Octoin response to the Septemattacks. 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. Government, allowing the National Security Agency to access phone metadata, authorize roving wiretaps, and detain individuals at the U.S. The act greatly expanded the surveillance powers of the U.S. 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.
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