Legal Issues: USA Patriot Act Still Raising Questions

Abstract

In the nearly 14 years since the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted, it has not become any less controversial. Enacted just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Act was intended to address perceived shortcomings in U.S. intelligence gathering, and give the nation new tools to fight in a “new war” against terrorism. Even at that early date, there was a belief that more effective intelligence gathering would have given the authorities additional information about the planners and the plan. Whether it would have been enough to prevent the attacks is a question that will likely never be answered. The PATRIOT Act was a series of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which regulated the gathering of intelligence information. FISA was enacted in the wake of allegations of abuse in the wake of the Vietnam War, anti-communism investigations and the Watergate scandal and created a series of policies and procedures to manage intelligence gathering activities. It also created the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to approve requests to conduct investigations.