Patriot Act Sunset Makes Little Difference.

(INDYRADIO 1June15) The original "Patriot Act" was cobbled together in a way that made analysis difficult from the start. A recent court decision has found that section 215 doesn't authorize bulk collection of phone records. A related executive order is being challenged, and NSA insiders have argued against the whole concept of mass collection as flawed. A brief summary of the expired sections follows and a detailed breakdown is available here.

201: affected financial transactions with countries officially labeled as "terrorist", as well as material support of terrorism OR terrorist organizations. These laws have been used with wide latitude against charitable and non-profit organizations, especially those with connections to the Arab world.

206: compelled the assistance 3rd parties, such as your internet provider, to assist in surveillance and allows "roving" wiretaps, that target the person rather than the equipment.

215: was used to justify NSA mass collection programs never did eliminate the need for a court order, but loosened the restrictions and allowed for the collection of "an tangible object" needed for "an investigation to protect the United States from international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities" even if these were held by a US citizen. 

All three of these can be trumped by executive order 12333, which assigns to the NSA many specific tasks, including, in section 1.12 (b) (6), "Collection, processing and dissemination of signals intelligence information for counterintelligence purposes". The (broadly interpreted) 1981 order is currently being challenged by the ACLU:

https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/eo-12333-foia-second-amended-complaint

Financial transactions, even with the expiration of section 201, may run afoul of various executive orders issued since November 2012, including those imposing sanctions on Iran:

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx

Finally, regardless of law, policy may not follow, as indicated by a former State Department speech writer, who learned his lesson and resigned to become an activist with avaaz.org. 

Last March, John Napier Tye received a call from the White House counsel's office about a speech he was preparing for his boss at the State Department:

The speech was about the impact that the disclosure of National Security Agency surveillance practices would have on U.S. Internet freedom policies. The draft stated that “if U.S. citizens disagree with congressional and executive branch determinations about the proper scope of signals intelligence activities, they have the opportunity to change the policy through our democratic process.”

But the White House counsel’s office told me that no, that wasn’t true. I was instructed to amend the line, making a general reference to “our laws and policies,” rather than our intelligence practices. I did.

So you can change the law, but can you change their practices? After sunset, nothing changes but the lighting.

David Roknich,  INDYRADIO

listen in at http://ch0.us