L' INTELLIGENCE CYBER par Jean-Paul Pinte

In enacting the USA PATRIOT Act just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Con
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gress sought to enhance investigations against specific, named persons suspected
of terrorism. As voluminous documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden
have revealed, however, the president and the National Security Agency (NSA) have re
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lied on that law to authorize the daily, ongoing capture of all U.S. communication records.
These documents make clear that the Bush and Obama administrations ignored statutory
constraints to authorize exceptionally broad intelligence-gathering programs. But from our
review of legislative hearings and debates on the PATRIOT Act over the last five years,
along with numerous declassified documents on surveillance, we find that unilateral action
by the executive branch was only partly to blame for unrestrained domestic spying.

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