ABSTRACT
The first significant instance of sweeping military surveillance of civilians came with the passage of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 during the period leading up to US involvement in World War I. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Laird v. Ta- tum, 408 US 1, that the military was constitutionally permitted to conduct surveillance, and that the existence of surveillance itself was not an infringement of the First Amendment. In his dissenting opinion, Justice William O. Douglas called the military surveillance of civilians a "cancer on the body politic." In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress adopted the USA Patriot Act, granting broader authority to government agencies to monitor citizens in cases of prospective national security risk. This act lowers many of the requirements for surveillance and increases the scope of surveillance permitted once court permission is secured.
