NSA snooping finds few friends on Capitol Hill

Congress will again take up the re-authorization of the Patriot Act next week. The Senate failed to reach an agreement on the measure Friday after contentious debate over the National Security Agency’s snooping on Americans, allowed under Section 215 of the act.

In March 2013, National Intelligence Director James Clapper assured lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the NSA did not collect any type of data on millions of Americans. A few months later, many would accuse Clapper of lying after NSA whistleblower and accused traitor Edward Snowden fled the country and dropped a bombshell from Hong Kong.

“The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone,” Snowden said. “It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes them and measures them and it stores them.”

One of the NSA’s biggest critics in Congress is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. On Friday, Paul blasted NSA snooping in a 10-hour marathon speech on the Senate floor.

“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” Paul said. “That time is now, and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.”

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records is unconstitutional—and yet, Paul said, the Obama administration refuses to end the practice. He added that well-meaning people might be willing to give up a measure of freedom to prevent terrorism, but the people saying that’s necessary haven’t been honest.

The House already passed by a wide margin a bill to extend parts of the Patriot Act. The USA Freedom Act would prohibit bulk collection of phone data.

That puts Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a bind. He tried and failed Friday to get a reauthorization bill through the Senate. Now the Senate is in recess until Sunday, when key parts of the Patriot Act will expire.

The NSA is reportedly preparing to shut down the bulk collection operation, something McConnell didn’t want to happen.

“This is a high-threat period, and we know what’s going on overseas, we know what’s been tried here at home,” said McConnell, who isn’t alone in his fears. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton is narrating ads urging lawmakers to re-authorize the NSA to collect bulk data.

“The number of people who actually want to shut the program down entirely is really very small,” Bolton said on Fox News. “The issue for me is getting the debate pushed forward two or three years until we get into a presidency where many Republicans, I think, would have greater faith that a new president’s not going to endanger Americans’ civil liberties.”

More than 300 House members from both sides of the aisle voted to stop the data collection. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the only Muslim member of Congress, told ABC parts of the Patriot Act were an overreaction to the 9/11 terror attacks.

“I think that it is absolutely the case that there is a bipartisan agreement that the Patriot Act went too far and certain provisions of it should … expire,” Ellison said.

The issue has implications for the 2016 president election, as well. Paul is vying for the Republican nomination. So is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who told Fox News he’s also against reauthorizing the bulk collection of Americans’ phone data.

“It seems like we’re spending billions of dollars on the whiz-bang technology and not enough money on human resources, which really is proven to be the most effective way of stopping terrorism,” Huckabee said.

Listen to Jim Henry’s report on the Patriot Act on The World and Everything in It.