Twenty-five years after the Patriot Act, Washington’s surveillance capabilities are growing faster than the safeguards meant to restrain them
By Alan Lolaev, visiting researcher at the Laboratory for Political Geography and Contemporary Geopolitics, Higher School of Economics (Moscow)
On October 26,2001, US President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, less than seven weeks after the September 11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York. The speed of its passage reflected the extraordinary political and social atmosphere in the United States. The tragedy had shattered the country’s sense of security, and fears of further terrorist activity continued to haunt the country in the months that followed.
In the weeks after 9/11, grief and anger were accompanied by an unprecedented surge of patriotism and national solidarity. President Bush’s approval rating reached 86 percent by late September, and public trust in the federal government rose to levels unseen in decades. A majority of Americans also expressed a willingness to sacrifice at least some civil liberties if doing so would help combat terrorism. Under intense pressure to prevent another catastrophe, Congress moved rapidly to expand federal investigative and surveillance powers.
The Patriot Act facilitated information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies, broadened certain authorities to obtain records, and expanded investigative tools available in terrorism cases. Supporters argued that these measures were necessary to confront a transnational threat with legal instruments suited to a new security environment.
Yet national unity did not eliminate concerns about civil rights. Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as people perceived to belong to these communities, faced increased discrimination and violence. As the immediate shock of 9/11 receded, questions grew over how far the governments’ new powers should extend and what safeguards were needed to prevent abuse.
These tensions would shape the law’s legacy for decades. The debate intensified after Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures exposed the scale of certain US surveillance programs, helping spur the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015, which curtailed the government’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records. The controversy revealed that the challenge was not simply how to protect Americans from terrorism, but how to preserve privacy and civil liberties while doing so.
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