Feds logged website visitors in 2019, citing Patriot Act authority

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The federal government gathered up visitor logs for some websites in 2019, the Office of Director of National Intelligence disclosed in letters made public this week. And the feds cited authority derived from a provision of the Patriot Act to do it.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe confirmed these actions in a November 6 letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), part of an exchange (PDF) first obtained and published by the New York Times.

The exchange begins with a May 20 letter from Wyden to the ODNI asking then-director Richard Grenell to explain if and how the federal government uses section 215 of the Patriot Act to obtain IP addresses and other Web browsing information. At the time, the Senate had just passed legislation re-authorizing the law. Wyden was among the privacy advocates in the Senate pushing to amend the law to prevent the FBI from using Section 215 to obtain users' search and browsing histories, but his measure did not succeed.

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