The Patriot Act “updated” surveillance powers – but failed to “update” the checks and balances needed to ensure those surveillance powers include proper judicial oversight.
For example, a roving wiretap follows the target of the surveillance from telephone to telephone. Because there is a greater potential for abuse using roving wiretaps compared to traditional wiretaps, which apply to a single telephone, Congress insisted on important privacy safeguards when, prior to the Patriot Act, it first approved this “updated” surveillance power for criminal investigations.
Section 206 of the Patriot Act created roving wiretaps in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) investigations. Section 206 erodes the basic constitutional rule of particularization by allow the government to obtain “roving wiretaps” without empowering the court to make sure that the government ascertain that the conversations being intercepted actually involve a target of the investigation. Section 206 also created “John Doe” roving wiretaps – wiretaps that need not specify a target or a device such as a telephone.
The failure to include an ascertainment requirement, and the failure to require naming either a target or a device, is what is controversial about section 206 of the Patriot Act. Congress “updated” the surveillance power, but didn’t update the safeguards.
Another example is the use of “pen registers” and “trap and trace” devices to track detailed information about Internet use. Telephone pen/trap orders, as they are known, permit the government to obtain a list of telephone numbers for incoming or outgoing calls with a court order not based on probable cause. However, Internet addressing information reveals much more detail, such as the specific web pages viewed or search terms entered into a search engine. When Congress expanded the government’s power to get pen/trap orders for Internet communications in the Patriot Act, however, these differences between telephone and Internet communications were ignored. Congress failed to specify rules to ensure that the privacy of ordinary Americans web surfing and e-mail habits were protected.
Again, Congress updated the surveillance powers, but not the safeguards.