Summary

The Patriot Act is a law passed in the United States in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The law expands the authority of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to fight terrorism and other crimes.
The act was meant to maintain and increase national security, with a particular emphasis on security against foreign terrorism. It amended older laws and added new provisions that gave a variety of powers to various federal entities. The following is a summary of some of the major provisions of the Patriot Act:

      • The act makes it easier for various agencies to investigate terrorism. For example, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) could previously only carry out investigations when its goal was to gather intelligence on foreign agents. The Patriot Act allowed FISA to carry out criminal investigations in addition to intelligence gathering. The act also allowed different agencies to communicate and share information with each other.

      • The act allowed law enforcement agencies more ability to engage in surveillance, such as making business and financial records and library check-out histories searchable. Section 215 is probably the most well-known provision of the act. It allowed intelligence agencies to collect data on Americans' phone records. It also allowed for the use of roving wiretaps.

       • The act gives broad exemptions to what are called sneak and peek warrants. These are when a law enforcement agency conducts a search without providing notice to the suspect. The Supreme Court has deemed these a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. The act only requires agencies to provide evidence that providing notice will jeopardize their investigation.

      • The act increases penalties for terrorism, and it expands the definition of what is considered an act of terrorism. For example, it includes a definition of domestic terrorism and adds computer crimes to a list of punishable offenses. The statute of limitations was also removed for acts of terrorism. The act could also be applied retroactively to crimes committed before the act was passed.

Intended Positives

The law was intended to improve the ability of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent terrorist attacks and other crimes by expanding their surveillance and investigative powers.
    • Proponents of the act say that the act has increased the government's ability to communicate and share information across different entities in the intelligence community
    • Roving wiretaps allow agencies to investigate potential criminal activity more quickly and efficiently.
    • The increase in funding gives the government more resources to investigate and counter terrorist activities.
    • The 'lone wolf' provision allows the government to investigate an individual not tied to any specific terrorist group.

Known or Announced Negatives

The law has been criticized for expanding government surveillance powers and for infringing on civil liberties.
      • Forgoes the need for US law enforcement to receive a court order before monitoring or taking legal action against a suspected terrorist
      • Prohibits US citizens and organizations from publicly disclosing or challenging the reception of government-issued search warrants
      • Forgoes the need for credible proof of criminal activity to indefinitely detain a suspected terrorist

Observed Positives

The Department of Justice maintains that the law has helped to prevent terrorist attacks and other crimes by giving law enforcement and intelligence agencies more tools to investigate and disrupt them.
As of May 5, 2004, the Department has charged 310 defendants with criminal offenses as a result of terrorism investigations since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and 179 of those defendants have already been convicted.
However, not a single concrete example has been given.

Observed Negatives

The law has been criticized for infringing on civil liberties and for being used to justify warrantless surveillance of American citizens. Critics maintain that because the Act was born in the wake of 9/11, the 130‐​page bill with more than 150 provisions was rushed through both chambers of Congress without any meaningful oversight or extensive hearings despite enabling the most sweeping federal surveillance powers ever.

As aforementioned, the Act has been criticized for infringing on liberties is because the Act allows federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct “sneak and peak” searches, access online purchase histories, access emails and browsing history and have banks notify the FBI if there is a deposit $10,000 or more into someones private account — in many cases all without having to go to a judge with a probable cause‐​based warrant as the Fourth Amendment requires.

After Edward Snowden went public with what he had learned about PATRIOT Act and related surveillance programs while a contractor at NSA, it became even clear how vast the PATRIOT Act’s reach had become, with the phone records of millions swept up under Section 215 of the law, both inside and outside the United States.

After Sen. Pat Leahy questions NSA Deputy Director John Inglis about alleged terrorist plots stopped by PATRIOT Act and related surveillance, it became clear that there was no concrete evidence and that the number might have been way lower than originally anticipated-close to 14. To this day, the ACLU and several other news agencies maintain that it has not played an essential role in stopping any attack.

Yet, even after this information came to light, Leahy and his colleagues allowed the program to linger on in only slightly modified form via the USA Freedom Act in 2015. NSA finally killed the program (allegedly) in 2019, and Congress has never renewed the authority — though as Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, subsequently noted, Executive Order 12333 lets the government do pretty much the same thing without any court supervision, much less approval.

The obvious flaws of the Patriot Act and the failure of several regulatory agencies to stop its mass surveillance programs even after several whistleblowers have come forward shines light on the fundamental lack of political power among civil liberties groups to compel Congress to repeal a law that, as time came to show, would be abused without concise evidence of stopping terrorist attacks.The PATRIOT Act’s greatest criticism is that it paved the way for additional laws, regulations and policies that have undermined constitutional freedoms.

In the words of Edward Snowden "I felt more adult than ever, but also cursed with the knowledge that all of us had been reduced to something like children, who’d be forced to live the rest of our lives under omniscient parental supervision."

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