A contentious surveillance provision of the Patriot Act, which allows law enforcement to conduct searches while delaying informing the suspect, is broadly used, but almost never in terrorism cases—despite Justice Department officials arguments to the contrary, according to an analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
“Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties,” writes EFF’s Mark Jaycox.
The rights group analyzed federal reports from 2011, 2012, and 2013, released after an unexplained three-year delay, on warrants that were issued under Section 213, known colloquially as “Sneak and Peek.”
Out of more than 11,000 requests for those delayed-notification searches in 2013, a grand total of 51 were used for terrorism cases, EFF found. Almost all of the other Sneak and Peek warrants went to drug investigations.
Notifications of searches were routinely delayed by at least a month, and often by several. The average (pdf) delay nationwide in 2013 was 64 days.
Fraud, theft, and immigration investigations all garnered more Sneak and Peek warrants than terrorism cases.
“Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties”
—Mark Jaycox.
“Exactly what privacy advocates argued in 2001 is happening: sneak and peak warrants are not just being used in exceptional circumstances—which was their original intent—but as an everyday investigative tool,” Jaycox writes.
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