Patriot Act

I plan to write my paper on the section of the patriot act that deals with the detentions of foreign and domestic "terrorists" and the legality of wiretaps. I chose this topic because I am interested in the intelligence field and how they operate. I am also thinking about including how FISA plays a part in this. I want to include information on she special judges that make up the judicial part of FISA. Another section of the patriot act that interests me is the ability to spy on anyone they want, however they want.

I know that the patriot act was established to further enable our government to gather critical intelligence regarding possible threats to the United States. I also know that it was intended to extend and cover some areas of FISA that were not previously covered due to technological changes as well as the changes of types of threats. I know that FISA preceded the patriot act by a few decades and was geared to suit a much different threat than the one posed today.

There is much I don't know about the patriot act, particularly about the detentions of enemy combatants. I don't know what the latest rules are regarding wiretapping international calls. I am not sure when the FISA act was passed or if it has been updated since 9/11 or if legislatures just wrote everything they wanted to update in FISA into the patriot act. I believe that it is possible that through my research my general topic could go off into another direction or just focus more on one particular idea.