Yet we know the government has used section 215 to collect purchase records of explosives precursors.
Officials of the Department of Justice say that they have used Section 215 with restraint, and that they have not, so far, sought information from libraries or bookstores.
In some states, like South Carolina, the Justice Department used Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to stop some of the worst laws.
Various writers and talking heads have used "Section 215" or the "Business Records Provision" to mean "NSA bulk collection" because the NSA secretly jammed its domestic bulk collection into Section 215 back in 2006.
In the thirteen years that have passed since 9/11, the N.S.A. has used Section 215 of the Patriot Act to take in records from hundreds of billions of domestic phone calls.
When Walter Wolfgang was forcibly removed from the audience during Jack Straw's speech to the 2005 Labour party conference, police used Section 44 powers to prevent him from returning to the conference.
In addition to phone metadata, the N.S.A. has used Section 215 to collect records from hotels, car-rental agencies, state D.M.V.s, landlords, credit-card companies, "and the like," according to Justice Department reports.
Government officials described it as fitting that the commission had used Section 308 to assist WorldCom shareholders because it was the disclosures by WorldCom last summer of its bookkeeping manipulations that prompted lawmakers to adopt the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Civil libertarians have sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get the withheld information, including how often prosecutors have used Section 215 of the 2001 antiterror law to require bookstores or librarians to turn over patron records.
Affordable homes for rent: Councils have used section 106 agreements to ensure developers have either included affordable homes within their own developments, or provided councils with the cash to invest in their own development work.
