U.S. Used Patriot Act to Collect Logs of Web site Guests

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U.S. Used Patriot Act to Collect Logs of Web site Guests

In a Nov. 6 letter to Mr. Wyden, John Ratcliffe, the intelligence director, wrote that Part 215 was not used to collect web search phrases, and tha


In a Nov. 6 letter to Mr. Wyden, John Ratcliffe, the intelligence director, wrote that Part 215 was not used to collect web search phrases, and that not one of the 61 orders issued final yr underneath that regulation by the International Intelligence Surveillance Court docket concerned assortment of “internet searching” information.

Mr. Wyden’s workplace offered that letter to The New York Instances, arguing that it meant Mr. Wyden’s proposal in Might — which he co-sponsored with Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana — could possibly be enacted into regulation with none operational prices.

However The Instances pressed Mr. Ratcliffe’s workplace and the F.B.I. to make clear whether or not it was defining “internet searching” exercise to embody logging all guests to a selected web site, along with a selected particular person’s searching amongst totally different websites. The following day, the Justice Division despatched a clarification to Mr. Ratcliffe’s workplace, in response to a follow-up letter he despatched to Mr. Wyden on Nov. 25.

In reality, “a kind of 61 orders resulted within the manufacturing of knowledge that could possibly be characterised as data concerning searching,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote within the second letter. Particularly, one order had authorised assortment of logs revealing which computer systems “in a specified international nation” had visited “a single, recognized U.S. internet web page.”

Mr. Ratcliffe expressed remorse that “that this extra data was not included in my earlier letter” to the senator, and steered his workers may take additional “corrective motion.”

In an announcement, Mr. Wyden mentioned the letters increase “all types of latest questions, together with whether or not, on this specific case, the federal government has taken steps to keep away from accumulating People’ internet searching data.

“Extra usually,” Mr. Wyden continued, “the D.N.I. has offered no assure that the federal government wouldn’t use the Patriot Act to deliberately gather People’ internet searching data sooner or later, which is why Congress should go the warrant requirement that has already obtained help from a bipartisan majority within the Senate.”



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