Senate OKs overhaul of NSA surveillance
WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval Tuesday to the most sweeping rollback of government surveillance powers in the post-Sept. 11-era, clearing the way for a new program that bans the National Security Agency from collecting and storing Americans’ telephone dialing records.
The Senate’s 67-32 vote reflected growing concerns about privacy, but also unease among lawmakers that Sunday’s abrupt expiration of the surveillance program, caused by congressional deadlock, posed a national security risk.
The legislation, which President Barack Obama immediately signed, allows intelligence agencies to access the same kind of call records, but only by requesting the information from telephone companies with a court order.
“It’s a historic moment,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who had championed the bill. “It’s the first major overhaul of government surveillance laws in decades. It adds significant privacy protections for the American people. … I’m proud of what the U.S. Congress has achieved today.”
Maryland Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Ben Cardin — both Democrats — voted for the measure on Tuesday.
“We are in constant search of the right balance between maintaining our national security and respecting the constitutional rights of American citizens,” Cardin said in a statement. “I believe we could have been even stronger in our protections, but the [measure] makes great strides over the existing … program.”
How much impact the legislation will have on NSA headquarters at Fort Meade remains unclear. The agency has been building a massive, 1.5 million-square-foot data center in Utah that was expected to store much of the information collected by the controversial surveillance programs,
according to news reports.
Maryland Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the former ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has long supported the idea of having telecommunication companies house the data instead of the NSA, and he helped craft a similar, bipartisan bill last year. The NSA’s headquarters is located within Ruppersberger’s district.
The Baltimore County lawmaker, a longtime supporter of the agency, said Tuesday he is disappointed that the NSA programs were allowed to lapse in the first place.
“As dangerous as the world is today, to totally shut down because of ideological politics is wrong,” Ruppersberger said in an interview. “It’s inexcusable. It’s ridiculous.”
The USA Freedom Act, which had previously passed the House, was sent to President Obama, who quickly signed it into law.
“After a needless delay and inexcusable lapse in important national security authorities, my administration will work expeditiously to ensure our national security professionals again have the full set of vital tools they need to continue protecting the country,” Obama said Tuesday.
First disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, the NSA surveillance program sparked a national debate over where to draw the line between Americans’ privacy rights and the fight against terrorism.
The government had been secretly col- lecting millions of phone records in its pursuit of terrorists since 2001. The information did not reveal the contents of conversations, but included phone numbers dialed, calls received and the time and duration of calls.
Obama had sought to reform the program, which was enacted during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. But Obama kept it running while Congress struggled to agree on reforms. Last month a federal judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection program lacked legal authority.
Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said passage marked “what could be a turn of the tide against mass surveillance. Although the bill’s reforms are only a modest first step, this is the first time Congress has affirmatively restrained the NSA since the attacks of Sept. 11.”
Almost all Democrats supported the reform bill, but Republicans, including the 2016 GOP presidential candidates, were deeply split, yet another expression of the divide between the party’s traditional defense hawks and libertarian-leaning newcomers.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who sought to terminate the program entirely and helped force its expiration on Sunday, voted against the bill, as did Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas voted in favor. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina did not vote.
The bill will allow the NSA to temporarily restart its collection program, giving the government six months to switch to the new system.
The NSA has said such a timeline is sufficient.
Tuesday’s vote was not without a final standoff, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who fought unsuccessfully to renew the previous NSA program without change, sought some last-minute amendments.
One amendment would have required the director of national intelligence to certify that a new system is up and running before abandoning the old program. It would have also required the phone carriers to notify the government of any changes in the way they collect and store the information. Usually, data are kept for 18 months.
“Nobody’s civil liberties are being violated here,” a visibly frustrated McConnell said Tuesday. “Before scrapping an effective system that has helped protect us from attack in favor of an untried new one, we should at least work toward securing some modest degree of assurance that the new system can in fact actually work.”
But he faced opposition from the House, which had reached a fragile bipartisan compromise that supporters said respected civil rights while still providing adequate surveillance tools to track terrorists.
“My advice is to take this bill and pass it and send it to the president to keep America safe,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California.
With concern mounting after the NSA program had been dark for more than 36 hours, senators rejected the amendments, which could have prolonged the debate deeper into the week.
“If members of Congress, particularly Republican members of Congress, ever want to improve their standing among the American people, then we must abandon this habit of political gamesmanship,” said Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican. “It’s time for us to pass this bill.”
Dismissal of the amendments was another setback for McConnell’s leadership. He had previously failed to convince his colleagues to approve even a short-term extension of the NSA authority.
Paul said little after the vote, but released a new campaign ad focusing on his efforts to shut down the program.
Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, among the new generation of defense hawks, said the reform bill “returns us to a dangerous pre-9/11 mindset at a time when America is still at war with radical Islam.”
The bill would also reauthorize two other parts of the Patriot Act that have been less contested, including the “lone wolf” provision, which allows the government to apply for court permission to wiretap an individual suspected of terror activities who is not part of a larger group, and another that allows the government to conduct “roving wiretaps” as suspects switch phones.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP leader, voted for the bill and said it was preferable to a continued standoff.