(The USA PATRIOT Act, Electronic Privacy Information Center, revised: March 19, 2003, accessed: May 21, 2003, ).
The 326-page bill was the focus of little discussion before its inception on October 26, 2001. Congress spent little time reviewing this bill, while many Americans knew nothing of it. Only one Senator opposed this bill. Russ Feingold was particularly concerned with the adverse effects this bill might have on the civil liberties of immigrants, still this bill passed without hesitation:.
Now here is where my caution in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and my concerns over the reach of the anti-terrorism bill come together. To the extent that the expansive new immigration powers that the bill grants to the Attorney General are subject to abuse, who do we think that is most likely to bear the brunt of the abuse? It won't be immigrants from Ireland. It won't be immigrants from El Salvador or Nicaragua. It won't even be immigrants from Haiti or Africa. It will be immigrants from Arab, Muslim and South Asian countries. In the wake of these terrible events out government has been given vast new powers and they may fall most heavily on a minority of our population who already feel particularly acutely the pain of this disaster.- Senator Russ Feingold, Statement on the Anti-Terrorism Bill (Oct. 25, 2002).
The Uniting and Securing America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, or USA PATRIOT Act, grants the federal government new, obstructive surveillance capabilities. Surveillance interfering with every form of communication. From the traditional wiretapping of home phones to extensive tapping and tracing of networks of computers. So much authority has been given to the feds that existing laws of privacy and surveillance had to be revised.
Title III, which requires probable cause, a high level of legal standard to meet, from a judge for real-time interception of the content of voice and data communications, has been altered.