Senate Talks USAFA; NSA Cheers

on 05/22/2015 at 3:05 pm

Last week, the house passed the USA Freedom Act [USAFA] whose purpose was to restrict the bulk data collection conducted by the NSA — as revealed by Edward Snowden almost two years ago — bringing the bill to the Senate where it will be brought up to a vote by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The problem now is whether the bill will pass the Senate as most of the Republican majority prefer a clean renewal of the Patriot Act.

I say problem, but, for McConnell, it could be a blessing. The National Journal writes, “But McConnell has no desire to see the USA Freedom Act — a measure he repeatedly has denounced as something that could help terrorists kill Americans — pass. Instead, he hopes to watch it fail to accrue the 60 votes necessary to advance. That could jolt more senators toward his preference of extending unhindered the Patriot Act’s three surveillance provisions due to expire June 1.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and now Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), are filibustering the renewal as I write this — in an act of TRUE bipartisanship — and they both go on to make a principled stand against privacy rights of all Americans and will continue to do so till they can speak no longer. With the deadline of the renewal being June 1st, let’s hope they can last. If they are successful, this will result in the Patriot Act, specifically Section 215, expiring and the NSA will no longer be able to gather bulk data from our communications.

This is not the whole story, though. The USAFA is also flawed; “The bill that the House passed yesterday, called the USA Freedom Act, doesn’t actually suspend the phone records program. Rather, it requires that phone companies, not the NSA, hold on to the records,” Shane Harris of the Daily Beast writes. So, rather than the agency maintaining the large amount of servers containing databases, they will just have to go to the phone companies and take their data.

Earlier in the same article, Harris also writes about how many officials of the NSA really feel about the program: it’s “more trouble than it’s worth.” Officials also go on to say that the bulk data collection does not contribute at all to leads on terrorist acts in America which means this program is not only unconstitutional, but a huge waste of money and resources. The passing of the USAFA by Congress would result in many high-fives around the agency’s offices because the bulk data collection is the most cumbersome part of the Patriot Act and the only part of the entire program that is being dropped. They are getting off really light. The agency will still be able to collect non-American communications which the USAFA does not address.

So, while the USAFA is a nice band-aid, its two years of bouncing around the Congress has significantly weakened its effect that does not really address issues that privacy advocates fought for. Hopefully, Paul and Wyden can introduce amendments to the Patriot Act that they plan to propose during the filibuster and get those passed. With two more senators joining in on the Paul speech — Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Senator Christopher Coons (D-Del.) — all we have right now is hope.

How do you feel about the USAFA? Am I wrong to be pessimistic on this? Let us know what you think in the comments below. You can also follow me on twitter.

[Update]: After a long battle in the Senate, Section 215 of the Patriot Act has expired. The Guardian put together a useful guide to what this means for all of us here.

Now, we will have to wait and see what will happen with the USAFA. The Guardian reports that Mitch McConnell wants to limit the bill’s transparency by placing an “amendment would strip the bill of its mandate to “make publicly available” novel interpretations of the law before the secret Fisa court — a measure that advocates consider an early warning system to alert Congress and the public of efforts by the intelligence agencies to expand their powers” (thus taking cartoon villainy to new heights).

In other news, the charges against Snowden still stand… Sigh…