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By Jordan King
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The Patriot Act was signed into law 25 years ago, just 45 days after 9/11, when nearly 3,000 people were killed when Al-Qaeda launched what remains the deadliest terror attack on American soil.
In the aftermath, then-President George W. Bush signed the act, which gave the U.S. government dramatically more surveillance powers. While Congress has since walked some of those powers back, the Patriot Act continues to impact Americans’ privacy rights.
To mark the milestone, Newsweek has examined what remains of the act and what privacy has been restored.
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The September 11 attacks, when Al-Qaeda terrorists flew hijacked planes into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia and allegedly planned to fly another into a D.C. target, led the U.S. government to launch its War on Terror.
The Patriot Act was a central part of this, and it expanded the U.S. government's access to certain phone and electronic communications during terrorism investigations and to business and financial records. It also removed barriers to sharing information among intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
At the time, Bush said the bill was “essential not only to pursuing and punishing terrorists, but also preventing more atrocities in the hands of the evil ones” and should be enforced with “all the urgency of a nation at war.” He added that the act had been “carefully drafted and considered” to make sure that it “upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution.”
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The bill faced immediate pushback, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticizing how quickly it passed “with only one public hearing and little debate,” the same day Bush signed it. The organization was one of many that voiced concerns that the new powers could be used against people not under criminal investigation, invading people’s privacy and diminishing free speech rights.
The ACLU has not changed its position in the quarter of a century since, with Patrick Toomey, the deputy director of its National Security Project, telling Newsweek, “Twenty-five years after 9/11, the pervasive power of our government’s mass surveillance regime is clearer than ever.”
Opposition has fueled multiple reforms to the act, including the introduction of new laws banning some bulk record collections and the strengthening of court reviews.
But many civil liberties advocates and legal scholars believe these changes “haven’t gone far enough to restore Americans’ constitutional protections,” digital rights lawyer Jennifer Lynch told Newsweek.
“Americans continue to object to police surveillance and mass data collection,” she said, arguing that the fast pace with which technology advances means “legislators and courts constantly play catch up.”
Toomey warned that protecting privacy is becoming “increasingly urgent” with the “rapid adoption of artificial intelligence,” calling on Congress to “begin the process of righting the privacy harms of the last 25 years.”
Federal agencies have repeatedly contended that reforms have achieved meaningful safeguards, with more judicial oversight, congressional scrutiny and transparency requirements, balancing privacy with counterterrorism needs.
"The USA PATRIOT Act provided an important set of tools for protecting Americans from those who seek to do us harm," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg told Newsweek. "While some of its authorities have drawn debate, the Act largely extended to national security investigations common-sense authorities, some of which had been available in criminal investigations for years. And while it was born out of the fight against terrorism, its authorities have proven essential across a wide range of other national security priorities."
In April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its transparency report defending surveillance powers in general as “critical to the intelligence community’s national security mission.” It said there are multiple rules in place to “protect civil liberties and privacy” as well as “rigorous and multilayered oversight efforts.”
Much of the debate around the USA PATRIOT Act has moved on to what advocates argue is "backdoor searches" enabled by legislation such as the Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which intelligence agencies use to collect communications from non-Americans abroad, sometimes leading to indirect searches on Americans.
Section 702 expired on June 12 this year and many digital advocacy groups are campaigning for it to remain this way, or face reforms, but Eisenberg has called for "prompt reauthorization," arguing that its absence leaves "the United States will be significantly more vulnerable to the very threats these authorities were designed to address."
Eisenberg argued that balancing national security needs and the privacy rights that are so important to Americans are not mutually exclusive, telling Newsweek: "The National Security Division takes concerns about government surveillance extremely seriously."
Newsweek has contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency (NSA), via email, for comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declined to comment.
Section 215 and Bulk Phone-Record Collection
One of the Patriot Act’s most contentious provisions was Section 215, which increased the FBI’s powers to obtain records that were previously restricted to specific categories such as hotel, storage and vehicle-rental records. The act expanded available records to “any tangible things,” including books, records and documents. It also lowered the standard required for a court to grant this access, according to a 2021 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
From 2006, the NSA used Section 215 to compel telephone companies to supply records in bulk, including records of domestic calls involving people who were not suspected of wrongdoing, to “help detect and identify individuals who were part of terrorist networks,” the CRS says. The collection of metadata in law enforcement was generally “narrower” and specific to “an identified individual or group of individuals.”
The records included the telephone numbers involved, when calls occurred and how long they lasted, rather than recordings of conversations.
The government’s use of Section 215 in this way became public in 2013, when whistleblower Edward Snowden, an intelligence contractor at the time, leaked classified documents that exposed what was happening.
In May 2015, a federal appeals court ruled that Section 215 did not authorize the bulk collection program. This power expired in March 2020, but exceptions still exist. For example, the ODNI’s April 2026 report says it can still be used for investigations that began before it expired.
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The USA FREEDOM Act And Other Reforms
In the wake of Snowden’s leaks in 2013, former President Barack Obama signed the USA FREEDOM Act on June 2, 2015, prohibiting bulk collection under Section 215 and replacing it with a more targeted approach.
The act meant the NSA had to request information linked to specific identifiers, such as phone numbers associated with international terrorism, from telephone companies, which kept all their own bulk records.
The law also prohibited bulk collection under national security letter authorities, strengthened procedures for challenging their secrecy requirements and required reviews of whether those restrictions remained necessary.
On top of this, a panel of outside experts that included privacy and civil liberties was created to assist the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which the USA FREEDOM Act required to appoint an adviser to help with certain legal interpretations.
While not every ruling was made public, the act also called on the government to review significant surveillance-court opinions for declassification and release them as fully as possible.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
While Section 215 was done away with, many advocates argue other surveillance legislation has "continued to update and expand the surveillance authorities of the U.S. government in deeply problematic ways," as India McKinney, federal affairs director of the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said.
McKinney and law professor Margaret Hu spoke to Newsweek about concerns over FISA's Section 702, which allows intelligence agencies to collect data regarding "persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information."
"Although it targets foreigners, communications that can be captured includes the calls, texts, and emails of citizens who are not the target of the investigation," Hu, the director of the Digital Democracy Lab at William & Mary Law School, said.
"It lets U.S. intelligence agencies collect communications from foreigners abroad without a warrant, and routinely sweeps in Americans’ emails, messages, and calls in the process," McKinney added.
Section 215 does not require authorities to obtain a warrant to surveil non-U.S. persons abroad but there is still judicial oversight, including a requirement for the "government to obtain an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before targeting the communications of Americans outside the United States for intelligence purposes," Eisenberg said.
As an example of misuse, McKinney cited a declassified 2022 court opinion from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, publicly released on May 19, 2023, that documented more than 278,000 non-compliant FBI searches of intelligence databases, including "individuals listed in local police homicide reports" and protesters involved in the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
In June 2020, a "batch query" was run "using identifiers of 133 individuals arrested 'in connection with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30, and June 18, 2020," U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Rudolph Contreras wrote.
"The query was run to determine whether the FBI had 'any counter-terrorism derogatory information on the arrestees,' but without 'any specific potential connections to terrorist related activity' known to those who conducted the queries," he said.
There were also "13 queries of individuals suspected of involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach" and "two queries for a person under investigation for assaulting a federal officer in connection with the Capitol breach."
In a press release in July 2023, the FBI said "in the time since these incidents occurred," it had implemented new accountability measures and "escalating consequences for negligent conduct." Judge Contreras acknowledged this in a subsequent opinion, saying: "Despite the reported errors, there is reason to believe that the FBI has been doing a better job in applying the querying standard."
Eisenberg defended Section 702, telling Newsweek: "This authority has proven essential to protecting the Nation, enabling us to leverage our technological advantages to defend the homeland from terrorists, support military operations, protect deployed troops, and counter foreign adversaries and dangerous illicit international drug networks."
He added that "Section 702 itself advances the privacy interests of Americans" as its allowances regarding non-U.S. citizens "allows the government to reserve its most demanding, individualized review" for Americans.
Beyond the Patriot Act
All experts that Newsweek spoke to stressed that the privacy debate now extends far beyond the powers discussed in 2001 because of social media.
“The ubiquity of technology has had more of an impact on our civil rights than any legal changes,” said Lynch, who is general counsel for the EFF. “In 2001, people were still using landlines, and social media as we know it today didn’t exist.”
Smartphones now generate a detailed record of daily life, she argued, “Today, we all carry around cellphones that collect, store, and share massive amounts of personal data, making it relatively easy for the government to learn everything about us.”
She said surveillance systems now available to agencies and even local police departments were “increasingly sophisticated and networked,” highlighting license-plate tracking and the purchase of cellphone-generated location data as concerns.
She also voiced concerns about social media monitoring, the analysis of publicly available information online, camera networks and government purchases of private data.
“The AI revolution has accelerated the ability of governments to coordinate with AI companies and contractors to conduct mass surveillance,” she said.
Toomey called for Congress to impose robust privacy protections across a range of technologies, including government purchases of sensitive location data and the use of facial recognition.
“Congress can begin the process of righting the privacy harms of the last 25 years,” Toomey said. “And looking toward the future, Congress can help ensure that the next generation of Americans are able to speak and associate freely, without fear of unwarranted government scrutiny.”
Eisenberg acknowledged that Congress has to consider Americans' privacy rights when considering the "future of these vital authorities," but argued that "protecting national security and protecting the constitutional rights of the American people are not competing goals."
"We have worked closely with Congress to maintain the appropriate balance between the two," he said. "We will continue to do so."
Newsweek's reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly, Oliver Pritchard, and Anthony Murray.
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