Answer:
The Patriot Act is legislation passed in 2001 to improve the abilities of U.S. law enforcement to detect and deter terrorism. The act’s official title is, “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,” or USA-PATRIOT. Though the Patriot Act was modified in 2015 to help ensure the Constitutional rights of ordinary Americans, some provisions of the law remain controversial.
What Is the Patriot Act?
The Patriot Act is a more than 300-page document passed by the U.S. Congress with bipartisan support and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, just weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Congress had mainly focused on legislation to prevent international terrorism. But after the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in which American citizens blew up a federal building, domestic terrorism gained more attention.
On April 24, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,” to make it easier for law enforcement to identify and prosecute domestic and international terrorists.
The law, however, didn’t go far enough for President Clinton. He’d asked Congress to give law enforcement expanded wiretap authority and increased access to personal records in terrorism cases, among other things. Congress refused, mainly because many felt loosening surveillance and records rules was unconstitutional.
All bets were off, however, after 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Faced with millions of fearful voters, Congress approached U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s post-9/11 recommendations with a different eye and overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act.
