“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”
As America scrambled for options in the panicked weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Congress hastily, and nearly unanimously, approved the Patriot Act (Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and East Bay Rep. Barbara Lee were the lone dissenters). Signed into law by President George W. Bush just six weeks after the towers fell, the measure altered the course of national security policy. With the purported goal of protecting American lives above all else, it prioritized security over privacy and, in the view of opponents, threatened threatened fundamental civil liberties.
The massive 342-page bill covered a lot of ground. Most controversially, it significantly expanded the government's surveillance reach, broadening its authority to collect personal records, tap phones, monitor Internet activity, and spy on religious and political organizations, often without any evidence of wrongdoing. It also allowed security officials to indefinitely detain foreign suspects not charged with specific crimes.
Since its passage, different parts of the law have been challenged by reams of civil liberties groups, who generally argue that certain provisions violate Americans right to privacy as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
And while some provisions have been struck down by the courts, including indefinite detentions, much of the law has endured.
But the part of the Patriot Act that’s continued to generate the strongest opposition is Section 215, which facilitates the government's indiscriminate collection of millions of Americans communications records. That, along with two other government surveillance allowances –- the little used “roving wiretap” and “lone wolf” provisions -- is what faced expiration.
Hence the recent Senate showdown.
What’s the big deal with Section 215?
Officially known as "the business records provision," Section 215 has helped government intelligence agencies communications retrieve records from private phone companies (like Verizon) on “any tangible thing" related to a terrorism investigation, including books, business documents, tax records and library check-out lists.
The extent of these powers, however, wasn’t publicly known until June 2013, when Edward Snowden, a National Security Administration contractor, leaked thousands of classified documents to The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. The leak revealed that the NSA had for years been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, which it in part justified through an interpretation of Section 215.
How does the USA Freedom Act change this?
Yet another zany acronym, the bill is officially titled: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act."
While maintaining much of the government's robust surveillance powers, the measure most significantly prevents the government's bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. Federal security agencies must now receive special court approval before reviewing personal records held by private communications companies, and are allowed to only conduct specifically targeted searches rather than indiscriminately surveying millions of peoples’ data. In other words, the phone companies still collect our data but the government, unlike before, can't automatically access it.
An issue unresolved
The debate created some interesting, if ephemeral, alliances between certain liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky); both fiercely defend privacy rights but agree on little else.
It also embodies the nation's ever shifting stance on security and privacy, and where to strike a healthy balance between the two. Even with the looming threat of terrorist groups like ISIS and recent beheadings of U.S. citizens, fewer Americans today seem willing to relinquish their privacy than they once did in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
However, there is still little consensus on the issue, and opinions often remain nuanced and at times flat-out contradictory.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that a slim majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the government's collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, and an even broader majority (74%) think that privacy should not be sacrificed for the sake of safety. Yet, more of those surveyed than not said that anti-terrorism policies haven't gone far enough to adequately protect them.
