Some of the NSA’s most reliable defenders in the Senate are working to undermine and reverse a White House-backed reform bill, with the expiration of key surveillance authorities imminent.
Vocal and powerful Republicans and Democrats who resist even the slightest of changes to dragnet domestic surveillance are pushing back on that tepid legislation, and seeking to grant the NSA a shock victory and additional authorities.
Even before the reform bill, the USA Freedom Act, was narrowly defeated in the early morning hours last Saturday, the Senate’s Intelligence Committee Chairman, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), was circulating a competing proposal that would delay the undoing of the government’s bulk telephone records collection program by two years.
Call records represent only a sliver of the government’s total bulk collection activities.
Burr’s bill would also, as investigative reporter Marcy Wheeler notes, expand the government’s dragnet activities, weaken privacy protections for Americans, and make whistleblowers who reveal abuses even more vulnerable to jail time.
The House-passed USA Freedom Act would transfer the bulk collection authorities to telecom providers within six months, although it would also extend the underlying and soon-to-be-expiring legal authorities for bulk collection—Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.
Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Saturday submitted her own bill, which similarly calls for the call records dragnet to continue for another year before being subject to a certification process prior to being turned over to the private sector.
Her legislation would also bar Inspector General reports on Section 215 collection a mere week after the publication of an Department of Justice IG report which detailed how the bureau for seven years collected bulk data in violation of the law.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday dismissed some concerns expressed by those who support Burr’s law—that telecoms outfits need more time to be able to assist state security forces in maintaining voluminous amounts of records on Americans. He told reporters that the companies are already collecting the data, and noted that under the USA Freedom Act, “the telecoms would continue to hold that data themselves,” and would grant access to law enforcement authorities to access that data when a warrant is provided.
“This is a system that we know already operates,” Earnest said.
The White House took the USA Freedom Act’s three-vote loss in the Senate as a sign that the reform bill is still the best vehicle through which to avoid the June 1 expiration of Section 215 authorities. President Obama reiterated that point on Tuesday when he said that the USA Freedom Act “strikes an appropriate balance,” and urged Senators to “work through this recess and make sure that they identify a way to get this done.”
When Senators return to Washington on Sunday they’ll have only a few hours to prevent a Section 215 shutdown at midnight. Any measure they pass other than the USA Freedom Act would have to be kicked down for approval in the House, which is not scheduled to reconvene until after the Patriot Act authorities expire.
The most hardline of NSA reformers, however, like Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.)—an opponent of the USA Freedom Act because he believed it did not go far enough to rein in US spies—have pledged to block any effort by House lawmakers seeking to quietly extend the Patriot Act while most Representatives are away in their home districts.
Any renewal of the call records collection would be fraught with pitfalls outside of Congress, too. A Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that the program, as is, violates the law.
