"Two particular provisions of the act rile critics. The Republican-controlled House — demonstrating that uninformed hysteria is bipartisan — recently voted to ban funding for Section 213 of the law. Under Section 213, law enforcement can delay notifying a target that his property has been searched. These delayed-notification searches require a court order, and they can be used only when immediate notification would jeopardize an investigation.
Such searches already existed prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, and the Supreme Court has upheld their constitutionality. Federal counterterrorism investigators have asked for delayed searches roughly 50 times during the past two years, and the average delay in notification has been about a week — hardly totalitarianism.
Another target of critics is Section 215. It allows investigators to seize documents — including, theoretically, library records — from a third party if they bear on a terrorism investigation. The ACLU says that this means the FBI has the power to “spy on a person because they don’t like the book she reads.” But this is another power that already existed. Grand juries have always been able to subpoena records if they are relevant to a criminal investigation. The Patriot Act extends this power to counterterrorism investigators and requires a court order for it to be used."
"As Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee September 22: 'We found out after we locked this guy up that he was going there because that library's hard drives were scrubbed after each user was done, and he was using that library to e-mail other al-Qaeda associates around the world. He knew that that was a sanctuary.' "
"To begin with, federal agents absolutely, positively are not permitted by the Patriot Act, the Electronic Privacy Act, or any other federal law unilaterally to write a search warrant that allows them to enter a subject's home. Only judges are empowered to issue search warrants. Absent a few firmly established contingencies (such as "exigent circumstances") expressly recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, agents may not enter a person's home to conduct a search without a warrant from a judge. Period.
"When investigating the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for example, law enforcement used one of the Act's new high-tech authorities to identify and locate some of the killers. Before September 11, law enforcement could more easily obtain business and financial records of white-collar criminals, such as nursing home scammers, than of suspected terrorists. It was easier to chase a money trail involving a white-collar criminal than one involving a terrorist. The Act ended this double-standard. Importantly, the Patriot Act still requires the government to ask a judge for a court order to do so. After the Act was passed, terrorist cells were dismantled in Oregon, New York, North Carolina and Virginia. Terrorists were prosecuted in California, Ohio, Texas and Florida. In other words, the Patriot Act's tools are protecting us. Terrorist funds — $200,000,000 — have been frozen or seized.
The USA Patriot is constitutional because safeguards are in place to prevent against undue violations of privacy and because the Act does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
