Government entities have been using Section 215 of the Patriot Act as justification to collect logs of web browsing activity.

In fact, “one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers “in a specified foreign country” had visited “a single, identified U. S. web page.”