Why was the USA Patriot Act passed and what are its provisions? What controversy has it created and how has this caused reforms?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Following 9/11, several laws were enacted to help prevent further acts of violence against the United States and to create greater flexibility in the fight to control terrorist activity. The USA Patriot Act (USAPA) was one of these laws and made changes to more than 15 existing statutes. Its aim was to give sweeping new powers to domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies in an effort to fight terrorism, expand the definition of terrorist activities, and to alter sanctions for violent terrorism. It expanded all four traditional tools of surveillance-wiretaps, search warrants, pen/trap orders, and subpoenas. The USAPA also gave the FBI and other intelligence agencies greater power to check and monitor phone, Internet, and computer records and expanded the definition of terrorism to monitor more closely the people they suspected of "harboring" and giving "material support" to terrorists. In 2011 three key provisions of the USAPA were extended through 2015, including roving wiretaps, searches of business records, and conducting surveillance of lone wolves. Civil libertarians were troubled by some of the provisions of the act that erode civil rights. There was also a concern that the Patriot Act was not limited to true terrorism but that investigations could cover a much broader range of activity involving reasonable political dissent. Congress created a new law, the USA Freedom Act, which restored the Patriot Act's expiring provisions except for the NSA's monitoring of all phone conversations.