House Declares Opposition to Patriot Act Reauthorization Amid Senate Uncertainty

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced two bills that would reauthorize Section 215 for either five years or 60 days. A spokesman said cloture petitions for USA Freedom and the 60-day extension “would ripen as early as Saturday at 1 a.m., though the votes could be expedited with unanimous consent.”

Sixty of the 88 House members of the House who voted against passage of USA Freedom on May 13 (see 1505130054) sent a bipartisan letter to McConnell; Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; Judiciary ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C.; and Intelligence Vice Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., urging the Senate to pass stronger surveillance reforms than what’s in the House’s USA Freedom legislation. Signees opposed USA Freedom because “its reforms do not adequately or appropriately reform surveillance practices or address privacy concerns,” said the letter. “Many of our colleagues felt similarly, supporting the bill only out of concern the Senate would be unwilling to engage in more comprehensive reform.”

Unless USA Freedom addresses the information collection authorities granted to the NSA under executive order 12333 and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act, Congress isn’t doing its job, said NSA whistleblower Kirk Wiebe. Even if the Patriot Act’s provisions sunset, the NSA will have authority to collect mass amounts of data under these pieces of legislation, said Wiebe, who worked for the NSA for 36 years. Under EO 12333, the NSA can collect information it deems necessary any time it wants, he said. “USA Freedom is more games,” Wiebe said. Congress has sold the legislation like it’s going to fix the NSA, but it’s not, he said. USA Freedom fails to give Congress the ability to oversee and verify that the NSA isn’t abusing its authority, Wiebe said. Congress should have the technical ability to oversee NSA databases, he said. If the Patriot Act sunsets, it will force Congress to do its job, and let people like Rand Paul and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., protect the privacy of innocent people and debate surveillance programs the right way, Wiebe said.

There's strong support for real reform in the House and the signees asked the Senate leaders to work with them to improve USA Freedom by incorporating the reforms contained in the original 2013 USA Freedom Act. The letter said the House wouldn't agree to short-term reauthorization or to weaken the legislation. Spokespeople for House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., authors of the House’s USA Freedom Act 2015, said all three oppose clean reauthorization legislation.

The case against a clean reauthorization of the Patriot Act is stronger after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling earlier this month that found Section 215 is illegal (see 1505070041), said Norm Singleton, Campaign for Liberty vice president-policy. The Campaign for Liberty, which was founded by former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, Rand's father, supports a sunset of Section 215, because the House-passed USA Freedom contains “inadequate reforms,” said Singleton, a former legislative aide to then-Rep. Ron Paul.

Reforming surveillance programs one step at a time is fine, but there needs to be an actual meaningful step, Singleton said. The House-passed USA Freedom isn’t real reform and contains many loopholes that the NSA will take advantage of, he said. If the legislation had contained amendments proposed by Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho (see 1504300042), it would have been real reform, Singleton said. The Intelligence Committee had veto power over the bill coming out of Judiciary, Singleton said. He said he has never seen a case where members of a committee defeated an amendment they supported because it would “displease” members of another committee. The committee set a low ceiling for how far surveillance reforms could go, which is why even if Congress passed USA Freedom, surveillance overreach problems wouldn't be solved, he said.

While Sen. Paul was filibustering, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) said in a letter to McConnell and Reid that it would consider scoring senators' votes on USA Freedom. Revelations about U.S. surveillance programs in the past two years have had a corrosive impact on trust in U.S. government and the independence of U.S. technology companies, said ITI President Dean Garfield. “Without action, not only are American jobs at risk, so is the open and borderless Internet upon which our innovation economy relies,” he said: The Senate should pass USA Freedom and “refrain from adopting harmful policies such as a data retention mandate.”