USA PATRIOT Act

The USA PATRIOT Act (or Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was passed October 26, 2001, just six weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The act was designed to give the U.S. president the powers needed to conduct a war on terrorism. With the country still in shock after the terrorist attack, some politicians felt there was a need for American citizens to give up certain civil liberties (individual rights of Americans, such as freedom of speech and religion, which are protected by law against unwarranted governmental interference) in the interest of national security. However there was never a thorough public examination of what this meant. The 342-page PATRIOT Act was introduced by President George W. Bush (1946–; served 2001–) and Congress passed it rapidly.

The USA PATRIOT Act granted a wide range of new powers to domestic law enforcement and intelligence agencies (government agencies responsible for gathering and interpreting information about enemies to the United States). President Bush, upon signing the act, said it would help law enforcement to discover and stop terrorists before they struck. The bill had several critics, however, and many considered parts of the PATRIOT Act a significant threat to American civil liberties.

Search and surveillance powers

Americans are protected from unnecessary searches and surveillance (close observation of someone under suspicion) under the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution). The Fourth Amendment states that government agents or law enforcement officers may only carry out searches and arrests after obtaining search or arrest warrants from the courts. Officers have to show a neutral judge “probable cause”—a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed. Under the Fifth Amendment all U.S. citizens have the right to “due process” of

Law meaning that no one can be deprived of their life, liberty, or property without a fair and adequate process, such as a court trial. An adjustment was made to these protections in the 1970s, when Americans learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been carrying out widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens, often because of their political beliefs or antigovernment positions. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) passed in 1978. It separated domestic investigations from foreign intelligence gathering so that surveillance of foreign agents could continue without restrictions while domestic (inside the United States) investigation methods were limited and overseen by the courts. FISA authorized warrantless (without search or arrest warrants) surveillance, but only when the purpose was to obtain foreign intelligence information.

The 2001 PATRIOT Act eased restrictions on searches and surveillance significantly. Government agents no longer needed to show that a crime had been committed in order to carry out searches on individuals. If they told a FISA judge that a search might be of use in antiterrorist efforts, the agents could demand an individual's records from banks, brokerages, libraries, travel agencies, video stores, telephone services, doctors, and places of worship without the person's knowledge. Similarly searches of people's homes or businesses could be made without showing probable cause. “Sneak and Peak” searches, in which the person being searched was unaware of the search, were authorized. Though FISA judges were to be consulted in these secret searches, their involvement amounted to what most people consider a “rubber stamp” and they had little oversight of the process.

Rulings about telephone and Internet surveillance also changed under the PATRIOT Act. Government investigators could obtain telephone and Internet records on an individual, showing communications coming into and going out of the phone or computer in question. To get permission for this, investigators simply had to claim that it might be relevant in a terrorist investigation. “Roving wiretaps” could be authorized by the FISA court. (A wiretap is an act of listening in on telephone conversations by a third party, usually without the knowledge of the callers.) Before the PATRIOT Act wiretaps were allowed in certain circumstances, but only on specific telephones. Roving wiretaps extended to any telephone or computer that a suspect used, roving from one telephone to another, with no particular target. Through this act government agents could tap the telephones of people whose only connection was that they might be acquainted with the suspect. Because these wire taps were so broad, oversight by the courts was nearly impossible.

New crimes and punishments

The PATRIOT Act created a new crime called “domestic terrorism ,” defined as “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States,” when the actor's intent is to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” Critics of the act were concerned that the definition of the crime was too vague and that people who engage in civil disobedience , such as civil rights and antiwar protesters in the 1960s, could be convicted as domestic terrorists and spend years in jail.

The act also set out new laws for immigrants. Any association with a terrorist, even if one had no knowledge of the individual being a terrorist, meant deportation back to one's home country. Under the act immigrants could be deported if a government agent believed they presented a threat to national security, even if there was no evidence to support that belief. Immigrants could be held for seven days without being charged with a crime and there was no court oversight of the process.

Reauthorization of the act, 2006

Many of the most controversial provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act were set to expire in 2005 unless reauthorized by Congress. These were called the sunset provisions. In 2005 Congress began a nine-month heated debate over reauthorization. During the debate the New York Times revealed that government agents in the Bush administration were conducting wiretaps on terrorist suspects without obtaining warrants from FISA judges, as required. President Bush claimed that he had wartime powers as president to authorize warrant less wiretaps.

The PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in March 2006, just days before it was set to expire. Some provisions were reworded or changed in minor ways, but the reauthorization made fourteen of sixteen sunset provisions permanent. One of the new requirements was for the Bush administration to provide reports to Congress on how the PATRIOT Act was being used.

President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act on March 9 in a public ceremony. Afterward he issued a “signing statement,” an official document laying out his interpretation of the law. In his signing statement the president stated that he was not obligated to report to Congress on how the PATRIOT Act powers were being put to use.

Impact

The United States government has always been safeguarded by a system of checks and balances among its three branches, the executive (president's administration), the judicial (the courts), and the legislative (Congress). Many of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act were designed to eliminate or ease the checks on the executive branch, particularly by limiting or getting rid of the oversight of the courts. The president argued that he needed that kind of unchecked power to fight the war on terrorists and save American lives. Many Americans disagree, believing that the system of checks and balances is vital to democracy and that a separation of powers among the three branches of government can be maintained without loss of security. They argue that in the past there have been many instances in which unchecked government interference led to the harassment of vital political movements and their leaders, as in cases such as the FBI investigations of civil rights leaders in the 1960s and illegal spying on antiwar protesters in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because the government has not reported on the uses of the PATRIOT Act, it is difficult to determine whether the act has succeeded in warding off terrorist attacks on the country. It is equally difficult to determine whether—or how much—it has resulted in unnecessary searches and surveillance of American people.