Source: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/libraries-first-amendment-overview/patriot-act/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:36:24+00:00

Document:
Since its passage 45 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the USA Patriot Act has been a lightning rod for controversy. It has taken center stage in a vigorous debate over the proper balance between national security and individual liberty.
Congress approved the Patriot Act by an overwhelming margin shortly after the infamous terrorist acts. The House voted 357-66 in favor of the measure, while the Senate voted 98-1 with only Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., dissenting. President Bush signed the behemoth bill into law on Oct. 26, 2001. The name of the act perhaps helped ensure its easy passage; USA PATRIOT stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
The massive law, 342 pages long, amends at least 15 separate federal laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.
The law permits roving wiretaps and so-called “sneak and peek” warrants, adds new terrorist crimes, knocks down the wall between foreign and domestic intelligence, amends the definition of domestic terrorism and makes many other changes too numerous to catalog.
Most of the criticism of the Patriot Act concerns its seeming infringements on Fourth Amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment prohibits government officials from engaging in “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Normally, the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching a person’s home. The standards are relaxed under FISA if the subject is suspected of being, say, a foreign spy. The Patriot Act lowers those standards even more.
As time passed, more members of Congress also objected to certain provisions of the law. This criticism led to modifications of several provisions. At the same time the executive branch and some legislative leaders called for a strengthening of some provisions. They also called for certain provisions in the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of 2005 to be made permanent.
Though most objections to the Patriot Act center on the Fourth Amendment, some critics contend that the act also intrudes deeply on fundamental First Amendment rights. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in July 2003 on behalf of six groups, several of which provide some form of support to Muslims in America, challenging Section 215 of the Patriot Act. In Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor v. Ashcroft, the plaintiffs contended that Section 215 violates the First Amendment.
Previously, the FBI could only obtain business records from vehicle rental agencies, transport services, storage facilities and similar places. Now, Section 215 allows the government to obtain “any tangible things,” which can include business records and individuals’ library records, health-care records, logs of Internet service providers and other documents and papers.
Section 215 also provides for judicial oversight of all FBI requests for such information. But there is a big dispute between the government and civil liberties advocates over how the language of the act on this point should be interpreted.
“Upon application … the judge shall enter an ex parte (in the interest of one side only) order as requested, or as modified, approving the release of records if the judge finds that the application meets the requirements of this section” (50 USC 1861 — at (c)(1)).
The requirements presumably would include the provision that “such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution” (50 USC 1861 — at (a)(1)), as mentioned above.
However, according to the ACLU, the FISA court merely rubber-stamps all requests because all the FBI has to show is that the records are sought for an authorized investigation. The wording of the law appears to allow for more discretionary review than suggested by the ACLU, but it is safe to say that the standards for allowing release of information are minimal. A judge who reviews an application has less room to reject the request than in other situations. There is no requirement for a showing of probable cause, meaning the FBI does not have to show any reason that it believes the target of the surveillance order is engaged in criminal or terrorist activity. That person could be innocent.
Section 215 also provides: “No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section.” This gag order would prevent a library, for example, from ever notifying its patrons that the government has requested information from it under Section 215.
The government filed a motion to dismiss the Section 215 case, contending the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the section. Arguments were heard in December 2003 before U.S. District Judge Denise P. Hood in the Eastern District of Michigan.
Hood gave the plaintiffs 30 days to decide whether they would like to amend their original complaint to challenge the constitutionality of the new version of Section 215. On Oct. 27, 2006, the ACLU announced that it would withdraw its lawsuit over Section 215.
The ACLU spent six years bringing another case related to Section 215 to its conclusion in 2010, again winning moderate concessions from the government.ACLU v. Ashcroft saw the ACLU sue on behalf of “John Doe,” who had received a seemingly indefinite gag order after a National Security Letter (NSL) forced him to disclose a client’s records. After numerous appeals, John Doe was given the right to reveal his name as Nicholas Merrill, but was still required to remain mum on the nature of the disclosure. The U.S. district court also released a less-redacted version of the original NSL.
In a coordinated effort in October 2011, the ACLU in New York and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Florida filed separate lawsuits over data collection under the Patriot Act. Both lawsuits seek to require the Department of Justice and the FBI to release all information requests allowed under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
Another provision of the Patriot Act broadened the definition in federal law of providing “material support or resources” to terrorist organizations. That provision, Section 805(a)(2)(B), added “expert assistance or advice” to the definition of “material support” to terrorists.
The plaintiffs argued that the ban on “expert advice and assistance” was unconstitutionally vague and could bar protected First Amendment activity, such as assisting one of the groups in petitioning the United Nations, providing legal assistance in negotiating peace agreements or advising on international law. In March 2004 in Humanitarian Law Project v. Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins agreed that the “expert advice and assistance” language was too vague.
Another key dispute was Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the only Patriot Act case yet argued before the Supreme Court. In June 2010, the Court ruled in the government’s favor, rejecting First Amendment and other constitutional challenges by a 6-3 vote. The Court held that the government could prohibit giving even training or advice on peaceful activities to designated terrorist groups, a finding that Humanitarian Law Project President Ralph Fertig called “Earth-shattering” in an e-mail to the First Amendment Center.
Another Patriot Act provision that has led to federal court challenges is Section 505, which expands the FBI’s authority to issue National Security Letters demanding customer records from businesses. Before Section 505 took effect, the FBI could issue NSLs only on those suspected to be terrorists or foreign spies. Now, according to the ACLU, the FBI could use its powers to obtain information on anyone. Similar to Section 215, Section 505 also prohibited businesses or individuals who received requests under the section from disclosing that fact to anyone. Critics charge that this gag-order provision violates First Amendment rights.
Two ACLU lawsuits alleged that the FBI’s NSL powers, as amended by Section 505 of the Patriot Act, violate the First Amendment by giving the agency the power to force the disclosure of sensitive, personal information without adequate safeguards.
In Doe v. Gonzales (2005), U.S. District Judge Janet Hall in Connecticut lifted a gag order imposed on librarians who had received a National Security Letter from the FBI asking for records from a library computer.
The government appealed both decisions to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On May 23, 2006, a three-judge panel issued its opinion in Doe v. Gonzales, which dealt with both the New York and Connecticut cases.
The 2nd Circuit remanded the New York case back to the federal trial court, noting that Section 505 had been substantially amended by the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005. “The Reauthorization Act has substantially shifted the legal footing on which Doe I stands,” the court wrote. The appeals court asked that the trial court conduct a First Amendment analysis of the revised version of National Security Letters provision.
As for the lawsuit from Connecticut, the 2nd Circuit determined that the case was moot because the government had conceded that the librarians could reveal their identities.
In another case connected to Section 505, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Doe v. Mukasey (2008) that the FBI must seek the review of a federal court when the agency orders Internet service providers to keep secret its demands for information. Still, the ruling was a partial victory for the government because it kept the nondisclosure provisions intact as long as the government initiates the review.
In June 2012, the Justice Department revealed for the first time all nine of the versions of national security letters it issues. The requests range from basic information about the address and length of service for Internet or phone service accounts to full billing or transactional records. The number of NSLs issued yearly by the FBI, according to the Department of Justice, has ranged in the tens of thousands since the passing of the Patriot Act, peaking at 56,507 in 2004 before dropping to 16,511 in 2011. A December 2010 letter from Attorney General Eric Holder to Sen. Patrick Leahy asserts that recipients of NSLs have been told since 2009 of their right to challenge the built-in gag order, but that only a handful have actually done so.
The ACLU has filed a series of lawsuits and motions against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is charged with approving orders for electronic surveillance and physical searches for the “purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information” on foreign nationals within the United States. The ACLU says it is trying to bring more transparency to an extremely opaque organization.
In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion in FISC for the release of court orders and government pleadings related to a National Security Agency surveillance program that had been conducted without the authorization of the FISC. The court agreed that it had jurisdiction over the documents, but refused to release them, asserting that there was neither a tradition of public access for releasing FISC surveillance materials nor logical benefit to the public that would outweigh damage to national security.
The ACLU filed another motion seeking to participate in FISC proceedings concerning its oversight role in regards to a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That enabled, within strict limits, the targeting of non-U.S. citizens outside the United States in order to acquire intelligence information. In December, the FISC denied opening its records to the ACLU for the same reasons as in the 2007 decision. It also denied the ACLU’s participation in the proceedings on the grounds that the group could offer no meaningful assistance and that appropriate oversight mechanisms were already in place.
S. 1125 – USA PATRIOT Act Improvements Act of 2011 (introduced May 26, 2011, by Sen. Leahy).
The Justice Department drafted another bill, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. Copies of the so-called Patriot II measure were leaked, which led to widespread opposition. The proposed Patriot II contained many provisions that caused alarm among free-speech and privacy advocates. For example, under the measure, federal agents would not need a subpoena to obtain consumer credit records. Under current law, they do need a subpoena. The measure would have provided less public access to information about terrorist detainees and related investigations. Amid the outcry over such provisions, the Patriot II measure was never formally introduced in Congress.
The Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003, or SAFE, sought to amend some of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. This bill, which had bipartisan support, would have amended Section 215 by requiring the FBI to have “specific and articulable facts” connecting records to a foreign agent. In April 2004, Sen. Craig said in Congress: “I am not seeking to repeal any provision of the Patriot Act but rather to salvage it by making necessary, albeit minor, amendments to it in order to safeguard individual liberties while preserving the very important law enforcement authorities it grants.” The measure failed.
In 2005, a revised version of the SAFE Act and the USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005 (H.R. 3199) were introduced. The latter bill, signed into law in March 2006, like the SAFE Act, modified some of the Patriot Act’s controversial provisions. However, it also made permanent several other provisions of the original Patriot Act. The act represented a compromise measure of sorts between those who wanted to extend and expand the provisions in the Patriot Act and those who wanted to modify them.
Many state and local legislative bodies have pushed back against the Patriot Act, passing resolutions in opposition to the law. DiscoverTheNetworks.org puts that number at 414 communities across 43 different states. Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana and Vermont have all passed statewide resolutions, according to the ACLU.
The opposition did not stop Congress from renewing most provisions of the Patriot Act in March 2006. Section 224 had provided that several provisions of the act would expire unless Congress renewed them.
Later that month, President Bush signed into law the reauthorization law that made many provisions of the Patriot Act permanent. It extended the sunset period of the controversial Section 215 for four more years. Perhaps because of widespread opposition to parts of the law, the act also included many provisions designed to ensure a level of civil liberties protections.
In May 2011, President Barack Obama approved a four-year extension of several provisions of the Patriot Act. One of these is the controversial Section 215. Todd Hinnen, acting assistant attorney general for National Security,testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, in March 2011: “Section 215 has been used to obtain driver’s license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, credit card records, and the like. It has never been used against a library to obtain circulation records.” Despite this reassurance, the measure remains controversial as some believe it is ripe for abuse.
The debate over how to properly calibrate the balance between security and liberty will never end, particularly in this age of global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks showed that government leaders must act to ensure that we can protect our nation from al-Qaida and other terrorists. However, many believe that the government must not sacrifice civil liberties in the well-meaning efforts of increased security.
Many people believe that government officials have encroached on individual liberty by passing the Patriot Act and subsequent expansions and amendments out of well-meaning motives — to combat the undoubted evils of terrorism. However, questions persist as to whether at least some of these provisions were undertaken with a proper understanding of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

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