Findings from the U.S. Justice Department inspector general has discovered that Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations helped partially curtail government email collection and surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the Guardian reports. The provision allows law enforcement or government officials to surveil citizens’ communications from service providers if the communications may be related to a terrorism investigation. “But Snowden’s revelations, beginning in mid-2013, helped shift the FBI away from using Section 215 to acquire email and other metadata,” the report states. “The Fisa court approved warrants to collect non-bulk business records 179 times in 2013, a number falling to 142 times in 2015 — though this was still a vast increase on the 21 approved in 2009.”
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