On October 26, 2001, weeks after the infamous september 11 terrorist attacks, the 107th United States Congress passed the USA PATRIOT act (or the Patriot act for short), in response to these attacks. The bill increased national security and surveillance powers and even created the United States Department of Homeland Security. Some sections of the Bill even allowed the government to collect telephone data from millions of unsuspecting Americans, which proved to be extremely controversial. Some critics even said the bill was unconstitutional, infringing on the 4th amendment which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Luckily a recently introduced bill, proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-WA) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), will look to reform section 215 of the Patriot act (expiring on March 15, 2020) which has been used by the National Security Agency to collect millions of American telephone records.
“The bill closes loopholes in vague language used by Section 215 for justifying mass surveillance sans warrant. For instance, while Section 215 originally stated that the government could collect telephone data if it was deemed “relevant” to an international terrorism, the bill cracks down on that broad language by limiting the types of criminal cases that are “relevant.” It also specifies how long data that’s been collected can be retained for and includes measures for more transparency around government data collection.”
Lindsey O’Donnel
Learn more here: https://threatpost.com/new-bill-proposes-nsa-surveillance-reforms/152183/
LIS 4022 Spring 2020 