As Congress debates portions of the PATRIOT Act that expired this week, we look back in the Washington Week Vault to the day President George W. Bush signed the bill into law in 2001. The nation, just weeks after the September 11 attacks, was looking for information to track down the terrorists responsible for the attack. NPR's Barbara Bradley explained why then-Attorney General John Ashcroft supported the law. The PATRIOT Act will allow law enforcement "to trace email messages from place to place, making it easier to surveil people for intelligence purposes," she said. Over a decade later, the portions of the PATRIOT Act that allow for bulk collection of phone metadata are at the center of the debate about how much data the government should have.

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