The Patriot Act was signed into law 25 years ago, just 45 days after 9/11, when nearly 3,000 people were killed when Al-Qaeda launched what remains the deadliest terror attack on American soil. In the aftermath, then-President George W. Bush signed the act, which gave the U.S. government dramatically more surveillance powers.
While Congress has since walked some of those powers back, the Patriot Act continues to impact Americans’ privacy rights. To mark the milestone, Newsweek has examined what remains of the act and what privacy has been restored. The September 11 attacks, when Al-Qaeda terrorists flew hijacked planes into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia and allegedly planned to fly another into a D.C. target, led the U.S. government to launch its War on Terror.
The Patriot Act was a central part of this, and it expanded the U.S. government's access to certain phone and electronic communications during terrorism investigations and to business and financial records. It also removed barriers to sharing information among intelligence and law enforcement agencies. At the time, Bush said the bill was “essential not only to pursuing and punishing terrorists, but also preventing more atrocities in the hands of the evil ones” and should be enforced with “all the urgency of a nation at war.” He added that the act had been “carefully drafted and considered” to make sure that it “upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution.” The bill faced immediate pushback, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticizing how quickly it passed “with only one public hearing and little debate,” the same day Bush signed it.
The organization was one of many that voiced concerns that the new powers could be used against people not under criminal investigation, invading people’s privacy and diminishing free speech rights. The ACLU has not changed its position in the quarter of a century since, with Patrick Toomey, the deputy director of its National Security Project, telling Newsweek, “Twenty-five years after 9/11, the pervasive power of our government’s mass surveillance regime is clearer than ever.” Opposition has fueled multiple reforms to the act, including the introduction of new laws banning some bulk record collections and the strengthening of court reviews. But many civil liberties advocates and legal scholars believe these changes “haven’t gone far enough to restore Americans’ constitutional protections,” digital rights lawyer Jennifer Lynch told Newsweek.
"The USA PATRIOT Act provided an important set of tools for protecting Americans from those who seek to do us harm," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. "While some of its authorities have drawn debate, the Act largely extended to national security investigations common-sense authorities, some of which had been available in criminal investigations for years. And while it was born out of the fight against terrorism, its authorities have proven essential across a wide range of other national security priorities." In April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its transparency report defending surveillance powers in general as “critical to the intelligence community’s national security mission.” It said there are multiple rules in place to “protect civil liberties and privacy” as well as “rigorous and multilayered oversight efforts.” Much of the debate around the USA PATRIOT Act has moved on to what advocates argue is "backdoor searches" enabled by legislation such as the Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which intelligence agencies use to collect communications from non-Americans abroad, sometimes leading to indirect searches on Americans.
Section 702 expired on June 12 this year and many digital advocacy groups are campaigning for it to remain this way, or face reforms, but Eisenberg has called for "prompt reauthorization," arguing that its absence leaves "the United States will be significantly more vulnerable to the very threats these authorities were designed to address." Eisenberg argued that balancing national security needs and the privacy rights that are so important to Americans are not mutually exclusive, telling Newsweek: "The National Security Division takes concerns about government surveillance extremely seriously." Newsweek has contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency (NSA), via email, for comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declined to comment. One of the Patriot Act’s most contentious provisions was Section 215, which increased the FBI’s powers to obtain records that were previously restricted to specific categories such as hotel, storage and vehicle-rental records.
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