The history of the USA PATRIOT Act involved many parties who opposed and supported the Patriot Act, which was proposed, enacted and signed into law 45 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The legislation, though approved by large majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representative, was controversial, and parts of the law were invalidated or modified by successful legal challenges over constitutional infringements to civil liberties. The Act had several sunset provisions, most reauthorized by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and the USA PATRIOT Act Additional Reauthorizing Amendments Act. Both reauthorizations incorporated amendments to the original USA PATRIOT Act, and other federal laws.
The catalyst for the USA PATRIOT Act occurred on September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and the western side of the Pentagon near Washington D.C. Within a few weeks of the September 11 attacks, a number of bills attempting to make changes to anti-terrorism laws were introduced into Congress. After the USA PATRIOT Act was passed it remained controversial, and began to be questioned by some members of Congress. A number of sections were struck by the courts. Some provisions were challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who filed a lawsuit on April 9, 2004. In April 2005, a Senate Judicial Hearing on the Patriot Act was held. The Act was as controversial as ever, and more than a few groups were campaigning against it. Aside from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Act had raised the ire of the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression, who were all extremely concerned about the provisions of the Patriot Act.
In June, the Select Committee on Intelligence proposed legislation to the House on July 21 as the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005. It repealed the sunset date for surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act — in other words, it would have made those sections permanent. A number of amendments were also proposed and passed. The House responded on September 11 that they unanimously disagreed with the Senate amendment, and agreed to a conference. One provision struck down was the so-called "sneak and peek" provisions of the Patriot Act. These were struck down after the FBI wrongfully used the provision to arrest Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield on suspicions that he had been involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
Background The Patriot Act made a number of changes to U.S. law. Key acts changed were the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Title II of the Patriot Act made a number of significant changes to the laws relating to foreign intelligence surveillance, of which the main two Acts that were affected were FISA and the ECPA. FISA came about after the Watergate scandal and subsequent investigations by the Church Committee, which discovered and criticized abuses of domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This led to widespread congressional and public outcry, resulting in Congress passing FISA in 1978. FISA governs the way in which U.S. intelligence agencies may conduct wiretaps and the interception of communications in order to gather foreign intelligence. FISA established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and a FISC Court of Review which administer foreign intelligence related applications for access to business records, wiretaps, microphone "bugging," physical searches and the use of pen registers and trap and trace devices. The Act does not apply to U.S. citizens, but is limited to dealings with foreign powers and nationals.
The ECPA was an amendment to Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which is sometimes known as the "Wiretap Statute." The Wiretap Statute was mainly the result of two Supreme Court cases — Katz v. United States and Berger v. New York — and from criticism by the Church Committee of the actions of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). The Supreme Court found in both Katz v. U.S. and Berger v. New York that Fourth Amendment search and seizure protections prohibited warrantless wiretaps. COINTELPRO was a program of the FBI that was aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. COINTELPRO's operations during 1956 to 1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements. These included those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen), non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The Church Committee found that most of the surveillance was illegal. Consequently, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, though noting that wiretaps and interception of communications are a vital part of the law enforcement, found that wiretapping had been undertaken without legal sanction and were being used to overhear the private conversations of U.S. citizens without their consent. These conversations were then often being used as evidence in court proceedings. Therefore, in order to protect the integrity of the courts while also ensuring the privacy of citizens was not violated, the Act provided a legal framework within which wiretaps and interceptions of communications could be used. The Act requires a court order authorizing the use of such measures against U.S. citizens, with penalties for those who do not get such authorization. The notable exception to these orders is in section , which makes an exception to the restrictions of wiretaps in cases where the President must take measures to protect the U.S. from actual or potential hostile actions from a foreign power.
When Title III was established telecommunications was in its infancy and since that time many advances in communications technology have been made. This made it necessary to update the law to take into account these new developments. Thus, the ECPA was passed, and extended Title III to also protect wire, oral and electronic communications while in transit, as well as protecting stored electronic communications. The ECPA also extended the prohibition of the use of pen register and/or trap and trace devices to record dialling information used in the process of transmitting wire or electronic communications without a search warrant.
Along with changes to surveillance measures, the Patriot Act also made substantial changes to laws relating to money laundering. The main law changed was the Money Laundering Control Act (MLCA), which was itself an amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) The BSA was passed by Congress in 1970 and is designed to fight drug trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes. It requires financial institutions to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, file reports of cash transactions exceeding a daily aggregate amount of $US10,000, and to report suspicious activity that might signify money laundering, tax evasion or other criminal activities. The MLCA, passed in 1986, further enhanced the BSA by making it a crime to structure transactions in such a way as to avoid BSA reporting requirements.
Immigration law was also tightened under the Patriot Act. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, was passed by Congress in 1952 and was designed to restrict immigration into the U.S. It allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also allowed the barring of suspected subversives from entering the country. The Act is codified under Title 8 of the United States Code, which primarily governs immigration and citizenship in the United States. Prior to the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized within one body of text. The Act was later modified by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and then by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Since the Patriot Act, Title 8 has been modified even further by various Acts, including the Real ID Act of 2005.
September 11, 2001 terrorist attack The catalyst for the USA PATRIOT Act occurred on September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and the western side of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. In response President George W. Bush declared a war on terror and soon thereafter senators from both sides of politics started working on legislation that would give law enforcement greater powers and to prevent and investigate terrorism in the United States. The Patriot Act was written by Jim Sensenbrenner.
According to The Washington Post, Viet Dinh — who was then the Assistant Attorney General of the United States — started work on measures to increase the authority of Federal Agencies, reportedly based upon the understanding that "[t]he charge [from then Attorney General John Ashcroft] was very, very clear: 'all that is necessary for law enforcement, within the bounds of the Constitution, to discharge the obligation to fight this war against terror.' " Simultaneously, Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), expressed concerns that civil liberties might be trampled in the rush to push through legislation. According to Dempsey, it was hard enough to get their attention, but "[even if] you [did,] some members of the House and Senate were, 'Don't bother me with the details.' " Various interested parties, including the CDT, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), closely scrutinised and critiqued the various proposed bills leading to the final Act, as well as the Act itself once passed.
First bills introduced Within a few weeks of the September 11 attacks, a number of bills attempting to make changes to anti-terrorism laws were introduced into Congress. The first bill proposed was the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, which was introduced by Republican senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) with Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on September 13. Among its proposed measures, it ordered a report on the readiness of the National Guard to pre-emptively disrupt domestic acts of terrorism that used weapons of mass destruction and called for long-term research and development into terrorist attacks. It also called for a review of the authority of Federal agencies to address terrorist acts, proposed a change that would have allowed the CIA to recruit terrorist informants and proposed to allow law enforcement agencies to disclose foreign intelligence that was discovered through wiretaps and other interception methods. The amendment proposed a Sense of Congress that not enough was being done to impede and investigate terrorist fundraising, and sought to increase measures to prevent the laundering of the proceeds of terrorism.