Policy Identification and Explanation Public Law

Policy Identification and Explanation

Public Law No. 107-56 Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act [USA PATRIOT Act] of 2001, Section 215 is responsible for access to records and other items under FISA, which stands for the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, this act was implemented during the George W. Bush administration after the September 11th terrorist attacks. These records can be, as listed in the original FISA document are “library circulation records, library patrons lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return records and medical or educational records or anything that would identify a person” (FISA, 1978). Section 215 is simply the striking and replacement of section 501 and 502 of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which covers procedures for physical and electronic surveillance and collection of evidence (§). Section 215 is almost exactly the same as FISA sections 501-502, the thing that makes it different is that 215 allows records to be collected on United States person. This means citizens and lawfully admitted permanent resident aliens, and USA founded corporations originally excluded from the collection of these records (+++). FISA was intended for investigations against foreign powers only where as the USA PATRIOT act of 2001 can be used for national investigations against US citizens(++) . The process for gathering the information is still the same, with the first step being The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge making an application, which of the thousands o...

... middle of paper ...

...t – What You Should Know. http://boulderlibrary.org/about/patriot.html

Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95-511.

Massimino, E and Cover, A. (2006). While Congress slept. Human Rights First, Vol. 33. Retrieved from American Bar Association

Richardson, M. (2013). The USA FREEDOM Act is real spying reform. American Civil Liberties Union: https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/usa-freedom-act-real-spying-reform

Stanford Edu. (2006). The ethics (or not) of massive governemtn surveillance. http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2007-08/ethics-of-surveillance/legal.html

Weigel, D. (2005). When patriots dissent. Reason, Vol. 37, p32-38. Retrieved Academic Search Premier

Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act [USA PATRIOT Act] of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56.