At midnight late Sunday, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 expired. The most prominent of these was section 215, which, the government has argued, provided authority for the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records through a program first disclosed to the public two years ago by Edward Snowden.
Although the expiration of section 215 portends at least a temporary suspension of the phone records program, efforts are well under way in Congress to pass new legislation that would continue to allow the government to collect phone records — but with stricter limits on which records and for what purpose. Indeed, the USA FREEDOM Act, a reform bill that has the support of the Obama administration, passed the House by a 338-88 vote on May 13, and may pass the Senate this week.
How much do you know about the government’s surveillance authorities — and the phone records program specifically? Take this quiz and find out.
It came about largely because of concerns that the government had insufficient surveillance, intelligence, and law enforcement authorities to prevent future attacks on the scale of 9/11.
Enacted six weeks after 9/11, the USA PATRIOT Act includes 238 different revisions to U.S. criminal, immigration, and surveillance laws — the overwhelming majority of which are still on the books.








