Senate lets NSA powers expire
WASHINGTON — The government’s authority to sweep up vast quantities of phone records in the hunt for terrorists expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., blocked an extension of the program during an extraordinary and at times caustic Sunday session of the Senate.
Still, the Senate signaled that it was ready to curtail the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection program with likely passage this week of legislation that would shift the storage of telephone records from the government to the phone companies. The House overwhelmingly passed that bill last month. Senators voted, 7717, on Sunday to take up the House bill.
Paul’s stand may have
forced the temporary expiration of parts of the post-9/11 Patriot Act used by the National Security Agency to collect phone records, but he was helped by the miscalculation of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who sent the Senate on a weeklong vacation after blocking the House bill before Memorial Day.
McConnell, also of Kentucky, relented Sunday, setting up a final round of votes on Tuesday or Wednesday that will most likely send a compromise version of the House bill to President Barack Obama for his signature. Even Paul, using the procedural weapon of an objection, conceded he could not stop that.
“Little by little, we’ve allowed our freedom to slip away,” Paul said during a lengthy floor soliloquy.
The expiration of surveillance authority demonstrates a profound shift in American attitudes since the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when national security was pre-eminent in both parties. Fourteen years after that attack, even as U.S. conflicts continue abroad, a swell of privacy concerns stemming from both the vast expansion of communication systems and an increasing distrust of government’s use of data has turned those concerns on their head.
While it would represent a retrenchment on the part of the government, it does not end the argument over the dual imperatives of security and individual liberty brought to light by Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency.
Republicans angered
The expiration of three key provisions of the Patriot Act means that, for now, the NSA will no longer collect newly created logs of Americans’ phone calls in bulk. It also means that the FBI cannot invoke the Patriot Act to obtain, for new investigations, wiretap orders that follow a suspect who changes phones, wiretap orders for a “lone wolf” terrorism suspect not linked to a group, or court orders to obtain business records relevant to an investigation.
However, the Justice Department may invoke a socalled grandfather clause to keep using those powers for investigations that had started before June 1, and there are additional workarounds investigators may use to overcome the lapse in the authorizations.
McConnell and other national security hawks who failed to continue the program badly underestimated the shift in the national mood, which has found its voice with Democrats and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. The moment also put him at odds with Paul, whom he has endorsed for president.
“I remain determined to work toward the best outcome for the American people possible under the circumstances,” McConnell said. “This is where we are, colleagues — a Housepassed bill with some serious flaws, and an inability to get a short-term extension to improve the House bill.”
Paul’s effort clearly angered many of his Republican colleagues, who met without him an hour before the Senate began to vote Sunday night. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who sparred with Paul on the floor over procedure, said later that Paul was not fit for the White House job he seeks. “I’ve said on many occasions that I believe he would be the worst candidate we could put forward,” he said.
Even as senators were trickling into the Capitol from the airport, McConnell attempted to extend some aspects of the law. He asked senators to consider a two-week continuation of the federal authority to track a “lone wolf ” terrorism suspect not connected to a state sponsor and to conduct “roving” surveillance of a suspect, rather than of a phone number alone, to combat terrorists who frequently discard cellphones.
But Paul objected, and McConnell denounced from the Senate floor what he called “a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation” about the program.
McConnell then moved to a second option, a procedural move to take up the bill passed by the House, which he said the Senate would amend this week. It was unclear Sunday how many amendments, including any from Paul, would be considered and whether any could pass the Senate or be adopted by the House.
The House bill would overhaul the Patriot Act and scale back the bulk collection of phone records revealed by Snowden. Un- der the provisions of the House bill, sweeps that had operated under the guise of so-called national security letters issued by the FBI would end. The data would instead be stored by the phone companies and could be retrieved by intelligence agencies only after approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
Obama and his director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., have made dire warnings in recent days about the perils of letting the law expire and called for immediate approval of a surveillance bill passed by the House.
Short-term fixes fail
McConnell had sought to get a series of short-term extensions passed so that Congress could continue to work on a compromise — like giving the phone companies more time to adapt to the new law — but that effort collapsed under the objections of Paul and two Democrats, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Further, members of the House rejected extending the current law, given the support for their bill.
After a middle-of-the-night vote for a short-term extension failed on the Saturday before Memorial Day, senators left for a weeklong recess as the clock ticked. Senate Republican leaders sought a compromise that would make a new bill acceptable to both hawkish lawmakers and Paul.
Over the week, negotiators on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had laid out a series of options to revise the bipartisan USA Freedom Act.
Democrats were critical of McConnell on Sunday. “The job of the leader is to have a plan,” Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada said on the Senate floor. “In this case, it is clear the majority leader simply didn’t have a plan.”