On October 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signed into law an act “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” The act’s title was an acronym—it is better known as the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 or simply the Patriot Act. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the bill briskly passed through the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the vote was 98 to 1, with one abstention; the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 357 to 66, with nine abstentions. The aim of the legislation was to provide the federal government with expanded authority to intercept communications, for purposes of both law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Many observers believed that the Patriot Act, which essentially consists of numerous revisions to the U.S. Code (laws of the United States), was necessary in an era in which information was the nation’s most valuable weapon in the fight against terrorism—particularly because of the growing perception that the September 11 attacks could very well have been forestalled had the right information found its way into the right hands at the right time.