Title: USA PATRIOT Act | Facts, History, Acronym, & Controversy | Britannica
Headings: USA PATRIOT Act
USA PATRIOT Act
United States [2001]
WRITTEN BY
History
Provisions

Content: This section also imposed a gag order that generally prohibited third parties from disclosing the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had sought or obtained such things. A related provision, Section 505, authorized the FBI to issue subpoenas based on a certification that the information sought is relevant to a foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigation. Orders for such information, known as National Security Letters (NSLs), also imposed gag orders on their recipients. Other sections of the act permitted the FISC to authorize “roving” electronic surveillance, which could be carried out in any location and with any equipment (Section 206), and increased the number of judges on the FISC from 7 to 11 (Section 208). In other titles, the USA PATRIOT Act increased the powers of the Secretary of the Treasury to combat money laundering; tripled the number of border patrol, customs service, and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) personnel along the northern U.S. border; established new terrorism-related grounds for detaining or deporting foreign nationals or denying them admittance to the United States; expanded the definition of “material support” for terrorist organizations to include “expert advice or assistance”; and created new terrorist crimes, including attacking a mass transit system. Finally, to allay the concerns of legislators who had questioned the constitutionality of some provisions, Section 224, titled “Sunset,” stipulated that 16 sections and two subsections of the act would cease to have effect on December 31, 2005.