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The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving
Life and Liberty
(Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate
Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism)
Congress enacted the Patriot Act by overwhelming, bipartisan
margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and
prevent terrorism: The USA Patriot Act was passed nearly
unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357?66 in the House, with
the support of members from across the political spectrum.
The Act Improves Our Counter-Terrorism
Efforts in Several Significant Ways:
1. The Patriot Act allows investigators to use the
tools that were already available to investigate organized
crime and drug trafficking. Many of the tools
the Act provides to law enforcement to fight terrorism have
been used for decades to fight organized crime and drug dealers,
and have been reviewed and approved by the courts. As Sen.
Joe Biden (D-DE) explained during the floor debate about the
Act, ?the FBI could get a wiretap to investigate the mafia,
but they could not get one to investigate terrorists. To put
it bluntly, that was crazy! What?s good for the mob should
be good for terrorists.? (Cong. Rec., 10/25/01)
- Allows law enforcement to use surveillance against
more crimes of terror. Before the Patriot Act, courts
could permit law enforcement to conduct electronic surveillance
to investigate many ordinary, non-terrorism crimes, such
as drug crimes, mail fraud, and passport fraud. Agents also
could obtain wiretaps to investigate some, but not all,
of the crimes that terrorists often commit. The Act enabled
investigators to gather information when looking into the
full range of terrorism-related crimes, including: chemical-weapons
offenses, the use of weapons of mass destruction, killing
Americans abroad, and terrorism financing.
- Allows federal agents to follow sophisticated terrorists
trained to evade detection. For years, law enforcement
has been able to use ?roving wiretaps? to investigate ordinary
crimes, including drug offenses and racketeering. A roving
wiretap can be authorized by a federal judge to apply to
a particular suspect, rather than a particular phone or
communications device. Because international terrorists
are sophisticated and trained to thwart surveillance by
rapidly changing locations and communication devices such
as cell phones, the Act authorized agents to seek court
permission to use the same techniques in national security
investigations to track terrorists.
- Allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without
tipping off terrorists. In some cases if criminals are
tipped off too early to an investigation, they might flee,
destroy evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses, cut off
contact with associates, or take other action to evade arrest.
Therefore, federal courts in narrow circumstances long have
allowed law enforcement to delay for a limited time when
the subject is told that a judicially-approved search warrant
has been executed. Notice is always provided, but the reasonable
delay gives law enforcement time to identify the criminal?s
associates, eliminate immediate threats to our communities,
and coordinate the arrests of multiple individuals without
tipping them off beforehand. These delayed notification
search warrants have been used for decades, have proven
crucial in drug and organized crime cases, and have been
upheld by courts as fully constitutional.
- Allows federal agents to ask a court for an order to
obtain business records in national security terrorism cases.
Examining business records often provides the key that investigators
are looking for to solve a wide range of crimes. Investigators
might seek select records from hardware stores or chemical
plants, for example, to find out who bought materials to
make a bomb, or bank records to see who?s sending money
to terrorists. Law enforcement authorities have always been
able to obtain business records in criminal cases through
grand jury subpoenas, and continue to do so in national
security cases where appropriate. These records were sought
in criminal cases such as the investigation of the Zodiac
gunman, where police suspected the gunman was inspired by
a Scottish occult poet, and wanted to learn who had checked
the poet?s books out of the library. In national security
cases where use of the grand jury process was not appropriate,
investigators previously had limited tools at their disposal
to obtain certain business records. Under the Patriot Act,
the government can now ask a federal court (the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court), if needed to aid an investigation,
to order production of the same type of records available
through grand jury subpoenas. This federal court, however,
can issue these orders only after the government demonstrates
the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation
to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning
a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism
or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such
investigation of a U.S. person is not conducted solely on
the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment.
2. The Patriot Act facilitated information sharing
and cooperation among government agencies so that they can
better ?connect the dots.? The Act removed the major
legal barriers that prevented the law enforcement, intelligence,
and national defense communities from talking and coordinating
their work to protect the American people and our national
security. The government?s prevention efforts should not be
restricted by boxes on an organizational chart. Now police
officers, FBI agents, federal prosecutors and intelligence
officials can protect our communities by ?connecting the dots?
to uncover terrorist plots before they are completed. As Sen.
John Edwards (D-N.C.) said about the Patriot Act, ?we simply
cannot prevail in the battle against terrorism if the right
hand of our government has no idea what the left hand is doing.?
(Press release, 10/26/01)
- Prosecutors can now share evidence obtained through grand
juries with intelligence officials -- and intelligence information
can now be shared more easily with federal prosecutors.
Such sharing of information leads to concrete results. For
example, a federal grand jury recently indicted an individual
in Florida, Sami al-Arian, for allegedly being the U.S.
leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the world?s
most violent terrorist outfits. Palestinian Islamic Jihad
is responsible for murdering more than 100 innocent people,
including a young American named Alisa Flatow who was killed
in a tragic bus bombing in Gaza. The Patriot Act assisted
us in obtaining the indictment by enabling the full sharing
of information and advice about the case among prosecutors
and investigators. Alisa?s father, Steven Flatow, has said,
?When you know the resources of your government are committed
to right the wrongs committed against your daughter, that
instills you with a sense of awe. As a father you can?t
ask for anything more.?
3. The Patriot Act updated the law to reflect
new technologies and new threats.
The Act brought the law up to date with current technology,
so we no longer have to fight a digital-age battle with antique
weapons?legal authorities leftover from the era of rotary
telephones. When investigating the murder of Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example, law enforcement
used one of the Act?s new authorities to use high-tech means
to identify and locate some of the killers.
- Allows law enforcement officials to obtain a search
warrant anywhere a terrorist-related activity occurred.
Before the Patriot Act, law enforcement personnel were
required to obtain a search warrant in the district where
they intended to conduct a search. However, modern terrorism
investigations often span a number of districts, and officers
therefore had to obtain multiple warrants in multiple jurisdictions,
creating unnecessary delays. The Act provides that warrants
can be obtained in any district in which terrorism-related
activities occurred, regardless of where they will be executed.
This provision does not change the standards governing the
availability of a search warrant, but streamlines the search-warrant
process.
- Allows victims of computer hacking to request law enforcement
assistance in monitoring the ?trespassers? on their computers.
This change made the law technology-neutral; it placed
electronic trespassers on the same footing as physical trespassers.
Now, hacking victims can seek law enforcement assistance
to combat hackers, just as burglary victims have been able
to invite officers into their homes to catch burglars.
4. The Patriot Act increased the penalties for those
who commit terrorist crimes. Americans are threatened
as much by the terrorist who pays for a bomb as by the one
who pushes the button. That?s why the Patriot Act imposed
tough new penalties on those who commit and support terrorist
operations, both at home and abroad. In particular, the Act:
- Prohibits the harboring of terrorists. The Act
created a new offense that prohibits knowingly harboring
persons who have committed or are about to commit a variety
of terrorist offenses, such as: destruction of aircraft;
use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons; use of
weapons of mass destruction; bombing of government property;
sabotage of nuclear facilities; and aircraft piracy.
- Enhanced the inadequate maximum penalties for various
crimes likely to be committed by terrorists: including
arson, destruction of energy facilities, material support
to terrorists and terrorist organizations, and destruction
of national-defense materials.
- Enhanced a number of conspiracy penalties, including
for arson, killings in federal facilities, attacking communications
systems, material support to terrorists, sabotage of nuclear
facilities, and interference with flight crew members. Under
previous law, many terrorism statutes did not specifically
prohibit engaging in conspiracies to commit the underlying
offenses. In such cases, the government could only bring
prosecutions under the general federal conspiracy provision,
which carries a maximum penalty of only five years in prison.
- Punishes terrorist attacks on mass transit systems.
- Punishes bioterrorists.
- Eliminates the statutes of limitations for certain
terrorism crimes and lengthens them for other terrorist
crimes.
The government?s success in preventing another catastrophic
attack on the American homeland since September 11, 2001,
would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, without
the USA Patriot Act. The authorities Congress provided have
substantially enhanced our ability to prevent, investigate,
and prosecute acts of terror.
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