US Patriot Act overview and legislative impacts

U.S. Patriot Act

How the U.S. Patriot Act facilitates foreign intelligence operations

Patriot Act has been helping the FBI with efforts of sharing information. The Act has made significant contributions through its information sharing provisions. The provision of information sharing has formalized the directorate of FBI intelligence. According to the consolidate appropriations of this Act, the FBI has been given the mandate to implement a new intelligence directorate. The necessity for capabilities of intelligence has cut across various programs of the FBI. This has done away with stove piping of information while enabling the FBI to adapt quickly to the changing threats. Experts have projected that this will work on improving the capability of FBI to share intelligence. This is not only between the intelligence community and the Bureau, but also across local and state law enforcement (Dempsey & Forst, 2012).

The renewal of the provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act has been crucial with respect to intelligence and information sharing to fulfill the responsibilities of the new Directorate of FBI. This was envisioned by the U.S. congress. This subject revolves around two major components. The first issue relates to the legal authorities, the collection of intelligence, and policies governing the collection of intelligence are evident. The second component is how the authorities share the collected information. The Patriot Act has granted the collection authorities that concern many organizations and individuals. In this context, the FBI is dedicated to carrying out its mission in consistency with the constitution's protection provision. Agents in the FBI have been trained to appreciate and understand the responsibility of protecting and respecting the law as they seek to enforce it. It is not an option to accord respect to the constitutional liberties; this is mandatory for all employees of the FBI. The FBI would be irrelevant and would not exist in the absence of this mandate (Abele, 2005).

The authority of the FBI to collect intelligence has been clearly defined in the law; the chief law enforcer (AG) is charged with directing this authority. The collection of information is conducted based on the president's intelligence priorities. Moreover, the Attorney General has the mandate to inspect each step of this process. Immediately after opening counterintelligence or international terrorism intelligence case, both the Justice department and the Headquarters are notified (Smith & Hung, 2009). The department of justice in collaboration with the section of intelligence policy reviews all cases related to terrorism. The collection authorities working under FBI control the federal courts. A federal judge must approve all wiretaps and search warrants for counterterrorism and counterintelligence agents. The judge requires that they provide a formal proof of their course of action to acquire a FISA Warrant. Agents of the FBI disseminate and collect intelligence under guidelines protecting the U.S. citizens. The agency is committed towards reasonably using its resources and authorities (Freedman, 2008).

Issues arise relating to the pooling of information even when they have been gathered legally. For intelligence to be effective, it requires skilled dissemination and analysis to fulfill the needs of clients inside and outside the FBI. The Director of FBI is charged with managing the overall cycle of intelligence. This seeks to ensure that the FBI has the dissemination, analysis, reporting and collection capacity required to protect the country. FBI's capability is founded on information sharing. Effective capabilities of FBI intelligence depend on how the intelligence collection is integrated and second, operations of criminal investigations. During the 9/11 terrorist attacks, various rules that had been widely misunderstood in light of the hijacker's information (Abele, 2005).

The FBI could not share any information. Therefore, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) agents were unable to share intelligence with prosecutors and agents working on criminal investigations. Agents and prosecutors involved in the case could not find information involving the case. Similarly, international terrorism agents investigating the case could not any way of knowing the appropriate information from the criminal agency might be important in counterterrorism investigations. Although the agencies had all the legal capabilities of sharing intelligence, the complex nature of the law forced them to be cautious in making errors of sharing information. Additionally, the absence of a network for intelligence sharing only discouraged the intelligence investigators and the criminals from taking about their cases. In this context, the most investigators did not have any idea of what information could have been useful to share with their counterparts. This was attributed to the legal wall that existed between criminal investigators and FISA intelligence Agents (Smith & Hung, 2009).

The U.S. Patriot Act demolished this legal wall between the two departments. Intelligence agents and law enforcement have been able to coordinate investigations of terrorism with utmost confidence of working in the premises of the law as required. Section 203 of the U.S. Patriot Act has authorized the sharing of foreign information acquired in surveillance across other federal officials like intelligence officers, national security officials and DOD officials (Hess & Orthmann, 2011). If section 203 of this Act expires, it would enable agents of the FBI to share certain foreign intelligence data gathered through wiretaps of criminal investigation services including MI-5. However, it would arguably be restricted to share that same intelligence with officials of the CIA. This result would not conform to the recently implemented 2004 reforms and Terrorism Prevention Act. This Act has encompassed various provisions meant to promote sharing of information across various departments of the federal government (Dempsey & Forst, 2012).

For example, section 203 of the Act has permitted information sharing across the U.S. national center for counterterrorism. The counter terrorism center has the right to receive any intelligence information gathered by its agents including global terrorism information gathered by the law enforcement community (Jordan & Jordan, 2009). Pursuant to section 203 under the U.S. Patriot Act, intelligence disseminated to the counterterrorism center is applied in accordance to three main missions of the center:

I. Producing an analysis of all-source terrorism

II. Updating useful database for the federal officials to fight any form of terrorists from penetrating into U.S. borders and III. Ensuring appropriate agencies receive and have access to all vital sources of intelligence required to execute their plans of counterterrorism or perform alternative analysis

The FBI depends on section 203 as stipulated in the U.S. Patriot Act for its provision of information pertaining to the analysis of international terrorism. This encompasses national security, national defense, immigration, protective and intelligence information linked to international terrorism (Abele, 2005). Evidently, the U.S. Patriot Act has authorized law enforcers to disclose any counterintelligence or international intelligence information to various departments of the federal government. This is done without withstanding any form of legal restriction. Without the provisions of this Act, non-FBI officials would not have access to such FBI information. This could put them back to the pre 9/11 era of uncertainties concerning authorities of information sharing. The congress decision to sunset the provisions of the law reflected the inappropriate nature of obtaining full information sharing and intelligence. In such a case, law enforcement officials will have to work in a complex legal era. This would continue to generate more errors on the side of caution that refrain the officials from sharing terrorism information (Bidgoli, 2006).

In addition, the U.S. Patriot Act has facilitated the ability of the counterterrorism center to offer a strategic analysis to actionable leads and policy makers within the intelligence and FBI community. This has helped to transcend indigenous government boundaries. The center for counterterrorism has confirmed the increase in the number of suspected terrorist napped at the U.S. border because of the U.S. Patriot Act provision of information sharing. The center maintains an updated database of appropriately suspected and known terrorists. The center looks upon various departments and agencies providing information about the identity of terrorists on a continuous basis. It receives must terrorism information from the FBI gathered in the process of criminal investigations and the shared provision of the Act (Dempsey & Forst, 2012).

Eradicating the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations has enabled the FBI to carry out intelligence analysis, as well as integrate the analysis into the Bureau. The intelligence programs implemented by the FBI have crossed all counterterrorism, investigative programs, counterintelligence, and cyber crime. The office of Director of intelligence has the capacity to leverage the opportunities of the culture of enforcing the law. This has been achieved through dedication to facts and source based analysis whilst ensuring the lack of walls between analysts, collectors and those acting on intelligence for the national good (Jordan & Jordan, 2009). According to the FBI director, prevention of future terror attacks is critical in enhancing the country's intelligence capabilities. This has the possibility of increasing important aspects of intelligence information about terrorists. The global terrorism aspect has created a great need for the FBI to combine its criminal operations and intelligence programs to curb future attacks (Smith & Hung, 2009).

While facing the current global terrorism threats, sharing of legally gathered information does not make any sense with departments that safeguards privacy and security. Through experience, the FBI has acquired insights into the fact that there are no dividing lines distinguishing foreign intelligence, terrorist and criminal activities. Foreign intelligence, terrorism, and criminal organizations and activities are interdependent and interrelated (Abele, 2005). Files belonging to the FBI are full of investigation cases where the sharing of information between criminal intelligence, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism investigations is essential to the ability of the FBI. This is in regards to the protection of the nation from criminal activities, foreign intelligence activity, and terrorists. Some investigations beginning as counterintelligence investigations end up becoming criminal cases. In some cases, the FBI initiates the counterterrorism, counterintelligence, or parallel criminal cases in maximizing their ability to conduct effective investigations. This has helped in addressing and identifying various threats to the U.S. hence implementing protective measures to protect vulnerable methods and sources. The success in the provision of accurate assessments of intelligence threats and convicting suspects depends entirely on the inflow of information between analysts, respective investigators and investigations, as well (Hess & Orthmann, 2011).

The reform introduced by the Act has directed the president to support an environment of information sharing for respective departments to share terrorism information. This should be achieved consistently with the applicable legal standards and national security. It has also given the president a directive to include protection of people's civil and privacy liberties. Further, the president is allowed to incorporate strong mechanisms meant to facilitate and enhance oversight, including access controls, audit, and authentication. With the introduction of the new U.S. Patriot Act, it has provided guidelines for the DNI to implement the provisions of the Act. In addition, the DNI has gained civil liberties and privacy by ensuring the implementation of the provisions. The FBI has managed to execute various orders in their privacy as well as in the disseminating information from the intelligence databases of the FBI (Hess & Orthmann, 2010).

The FBI uses a process of privacy impact assessments in evaluating privacy across main systems before implementing the system. This requires that officers conduct a thorough analysis of the effects of privacy in creating the proposed system's implementation measures. This includes assessing both the cumulative impacts and the impacts based on the proposed and existing system. The assessment process is a source of systemic assessment for the FBI top officials of the major impacts of systems before making these systems operational. The U.S. intelligence service reviews major systems and FBI processes. This is done by a team comprising of a senior privacy official from the FBI, a representative from the privacy council of the FBI and various representatives from FBI divisions (Abele, 2005).

The provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act are crucial to the security of the United States. If these provisions were allowed to sunset, it would only be inconsistent with the enactment of the 2004 Prevention and reform Act. This Act encompasses various provisions designed to promote sharing of information across various sections of the federal government. The provisions of this Act are crucial to the implementation of the mandate of congress of creating an environment of information sharing. The Act authorizes the sharing of intelligence information obtained through electronic surveillance, intelligence officers, and officials of national security. If we allow the provisions of this Act to sunset, we would be damaging the coordination efforts and information haring efforts of intelligence investigations, intelligence agencies and the CIA (Smith & Hung, 2009).

How the U.S. Patriot Act protects the civil liberties of American citizens

Besides damaging the United States' image as steward for the fight of human rights, the signing of the Patriotic Act had significant effects on the civil liberties and freedoms of the citizens. An author who wrote nine books regarding the first amendment of the Act argued that provisions of the Act go beyond the people's civil liberties that live in the United States, with the fact that the amendments were from various laws that already existed (Abele, 2005). It mainly gave the chance for interference of those rights that were protected by first, fourth, fifth, and sixth amendment of the bill of rights. This bill directly threatened the freedom of speech, information, association and the right to liberty and the right to legal representation.

For example, if the fourth amendment is clearly violated, the library surveillance established by the Patriotic Act enabled the monitoring of the computer terminals of the library and search warrants to grasp anything tangible without any legal documents from the court. Another practical joke that the amendment arose from the fact that it prohibited librarians and booksellers to disclose the description of the surveillance. The extent of this surveillance issue in libraries is a factor that Americans should consider because it is a violation of their privacy in the name of the Patriotic Act.

An important issue of concern is that the surveillance is not limited to the township and district libraries. It has infringed the privacy our residential homes, yet we have not noticed it. In the current era of digital communication, technological dependence cannot be underestimated. Many of the newly enacted provisions in line with telecommunications provider and users are probably not constitutional. They violate the rights discussed in the Fourth Amendment. The Amendment was instituted to prevent further terrorist attacks but from the look of things, these provisions may affect surveillance powers over many innocent citizens. In an effective manner, the Act rebukes the judicial system over the executive power. This is true through passing the functions of the court in the provision of an adequate checks and balance system (Alexander & Kraft, 2008).