Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

USA PATRIOT ACT OF 2001 • 6912001, signed into law by President George W. Bush on 26 October2001 as Public Law 107-56. The act contains many provisions thatcivil libertarians claimed would diminish the rights of U.S. citizensand legal immigrants to the United States, while defenders of the actmaintained that the measures in question were appropriate and proportionateto the threat posed by terrorism and actually quite limitedin their application.Among the provisions in Title II were Sections 201, 202, 203(b),and 204, which allowed government agencies collecting foreignintelligence and those involved in criminal investigations to shareinformation, expanded the scope and availability of wiretap ordersto include electronic communications involving computers, andallowed the serving of subpoenas to Internet service providers togather a vast range of information on particular subscribers. Title II,Section 202 also allowed “sneak and peek” searches in which theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) and the Department of Defense, could accessthe documents of U.S. citizens without immediately notifying theindividuals affected of the execution of such search warrants. Section206 of Title II allowed investigators to use “roving wiretaps”to monitor any electronic communications device being used by thesubject named in the wiretap order. Perhaps the most controversialaspect of the Patriot Act was Title V, Section 505, expanding the useof National Security Letters, which would require an organization toturn over various records and data pertaining to individuals withoutprobable cause and would forbid it to inform the person so affectedon pains of fines and/or imprisonment. The latter “gag order” provisionwas declared unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court for theSouthern District of New York in American Civil Liberties Union v.Ashcroft (2004); the attempt by the George W. Bush administrationto appeal this decision was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals forthe Second Circuit. Title IX allows the Director of Central Intelligenceto require the Attorney General, or head of any other executiveagency, to disclose any foreign intelligence gathered by law enforcementin the course of criminal investigations. Most of the provisionsin Title II that were originally set to expire at the end of 2005 wereextended until 31 December 2009 by the USA Patriot Act and TerrorismPrevention Reauthorization Act of 2005. The USA Patriot ActAdditional Reauthorizing Amendments of 2006 modified and limited