Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001

Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 by overwhelming, bipartisan margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism. Congress passed the act nearly unanimously (Senate 98-1 and HR 357-66) with the support of members from across the political spectrum. The impact of the act's newly-mandated and authorized tasks still reverberates today. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the law enforcement community writ large are the main beneficiaries of the new tools provided to law enforcement agencies. Depending on your personal beliefs, you may see this act as overstepping the lines of civil liberties and personal privacy. Time will tell. In the meantime, the act remains the law of the land.

The latest amendment to the act is Public Law 109-178, 9 March 2006 if you are interested.

The DOJ's first priority is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Since its passage following the 9/11 attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act has played a key, and often leading role, in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life. While the results have been important, in passing the act the Congress provided for only modest, incremental changes in the law. Congress simply took existing legal principles and retro-fitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network.

Additional Resources on the USA PATRIOT Act:

• Congressional Research Service (CRS) materials
  • A brief overview of the Act and changes to existing law (5 pp., 31.4KB, PDF) provides an abbreviated summary of the longer CRS analysis above without citations and footnotes.
  • An analysis of the 2005 Reauthorization Act (70 pp., 363KB, PDF)
  • A summary of the 2006 Amendment (6 pp., 42KB, PDF)
• The US Department of Justice summary of highlights.
• Commentaries on the act from various public interest advocacy groups:
  • Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
  • American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report, Reclaiming Patriotism: A Call to Reconsider the Patriot Act (39pp. | 1.01 MB | PDF)
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
  • The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)
  • The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies’ publication: Reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act(8 pp., 68.3 KB, PDF)

Summary

The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 contains 10 chapters or, in statutory terms - Titles. Titles comprise sections. Focus on the definitions and the activities codified (i.e., authorized by law) when you review this act. Develop your own 1-sentence summary of each of the 10 titles, capturing the essence of the each. Your words will be easier to remember than any summary provided by another source.

See Highlights of the USA PATRIOT Act, to assist in your research.