Which patriot act provisions sunset

Such petition shall be filed in a manner consistent with paragraph 3. Any person, including any officer, agent, or employee of a non-natural person, who in good faith produces the records or items requested in a subpoena issued under section shall not be liable in any court of the United States or any State to any customer or other person for such production, or for nondisclosure of that production to the customer or other person.

Authorization to issue. Contents of subpoena. Production of records. Nondisclosure requirements. The ACLU believes Congress should use the debate over the sunsets to examine the poor condition of checks and balances and the separation of powers in our political system and to bring the Patriot Act back into line with the Constitution.

Without a robust system of checks and balances, we run the risk of centralizing too much authority in any one branch of government or individual. As the Constitution's framers understood so well, centralizing authority poses the greatest danger to invidividual civil liberties. The ACLU also urges Congress to examine other provisions in the Patriot Act, like Section , which allows prosecutors to extend the definition of "domestic terrorism" to protesters who engage in civil disobedience.

These are listed below. Under section , all of Title II will expire, with the exception of 11 sections that are permanent. Also, a grandfather clause allows the authorities to continue to use expired powers after the sunset date so long as they are being used in a specific investigation launched before that date.

In order to understand precisely what much of Title II is about, once must understand how federal law, and in particular the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or "FISA" , maintain control over America's intelligence and law enforcement agencies. After Watergate and the revelations that the National Security Agency, the FBI, and other federal agencies had been wiretapping innocent Americans in the name of national security, Congress passed FISA to require judicial oversight electronic surveillance and other secret search powers in foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence investigations.

FISA, passed in , imposed certain standards and created a special, top-secret intelligence court to enforce those standards in intelligence investigations. Section allows the FISC to compel production of business records from any entity; however, after the sunset, the FISC could authorize production only from entities that count as common carriers, public accommodation facilities, storage facilities or vehicle rental facilities.

Second, the situations in which the queries can be made will be limited as well. In contrast to the current situation under Section where only reasonable grounds is required, the government will be forced to shoulder a greater burden to prove the legitimacy of such queries for records. However, some scholars have argued that the sunset of Section would not deprive the NSA of much useful information.