Federal law enforcement officials justified introducing the sweeping new measure as a necessary tool to investigate the lives of “suspected terrorists”.
Yet, in doing so, they aroused the ire of numerous civil liberties organisations which denounced the law as an assault on the basic freedoms of ordinary citizens.
But more than two years after its inception, critics of the Patriot Act say that what they do not know about the implementation of the law is more troubling than what they do know.
“Our fears are that we still do not even know how it is being used and that is even more frightening to me,” said Laila al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a civil rights group in Washington.
Those opposed to the Patriot Act are faced with the challenge of substantiating their criticism of the law’s potential for abuse with hard evidence of its enforcement, a problem noted by former Republican congressman Bob Barr in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-November.
Many Arab and Muslim Americans feared the statute would target their communities.