The USA PATRIOT Act substantially altered a number of key legal authorities governing intelligence gathering within the United States, primarily by weakening judicial review and other checks and balances on government intelligence and law enforcement powers. Some of the more significant changes include provisions that allow:
(1) Secret access to sensitive personal records that previously were protected from disclosure in the absence of a grand jury subpoena (section 215);
(2) Use of intelligence surveillance powers, instead of criminal surveillance powers, even where the “primary purpose” of the surveillance is criminal prosecution rather than the gathering of intelligence (section 218);
(3) Use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” devices that capture detailed e-mail header and Internet URL information without an electronic surveillance order based on probable cause of criminal activity (sections 214, 216);
(4) Secret searches that allow the government to delay, potentially indefinitely, notice of the execution of a search warrant in any criminal case (section 213);
(5) Domestic intelligence wiretaps and other intelligence gathering at the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence, in spite of the statutory prohibition that bars the Central Intelligence Agency from exercising “internal security functions”[10] (section 901); and
(6) Sharing of sensitive law enforcement information, such as grand jury information, with the intelligence community without the approval of a United States district judge (section 203).
they seem small, but they got to start somewhere, eh comrades!
