The keyword term "usa patriot act expired" functions grammatically as a nominal phrase or a noun phrase. While "USA PATRIOT Act" is a proper noun identifying the legislation and "expired" is a past participle acting adjectivally to describe its state, the combination serves as a unified conceptual label for a significant legislative eventthe cessation, due to sunset clauses or subsequent legislative action, of specific, often controversial, provisions within the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. It describes a historical legislative status rather than a verb action in this context.
Specifically, the most significant "expiration" of USA PATRIOT Act provisions occurred on June 1, 2015. Several key sections, including the controversial Section 215, which authorized the bulk collection of telephony metadata by the National Security Agency (NSA), along with provisions concerning "roving wiretaps" and "lone wolf" surveillance, were allowed to lapse. This lapse was not an oversight but a deliberate outcome of congressional debate over the balance between national security and civil liberties, particularly in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations concerning mass surveillance. The expiration triggered an immediate legislative response, leading to the enactment of the USA Freedom Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection, and Online Monitoring Act) shortly thereafter.
The USA Freedom Act largely replaced and reformed Section 215 by prohibiting the bulk collection of Americans' telephone metadata by the government. Instead, it mandated that phone companies retain the data, and law enforcement agencies seeking access would need to obtain a specific order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to query targeted data. While some provisions of the original PATRIOT Act remain codified into U.S. law, the "expiration" of 2015 marked a pivotal shift in the legal framework governing domestic intelligence collection, moving away from broad, untargeted data acquisition towards a more circumscribed, court-supervised process. This legislative evolution underscored a national re-evaluation of post-9/11 surveillance powers.
