Congress has a little under a month to reauthorize expiring provisions of the Patriot Act—including Section 215, the provision that is being used to allow bulk collection of cell phone data. But conflicts both within and between the two chambers put that reauthorization into question. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee
approved the USA Freedom Act, legislation that it worked out with the Intelligence Committee, but a
bipartisan group of members wants more reform than that bill includes, and they've met to plot how they can strengthen the bill.
Among those on hand for the meeting were Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, a card-carrying ACLU member from the liberal mecca of Madison, Wisconsin, and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a tea party adherent from Kentucky.
“The collection of data is still way too wide and can still be too easily abused,” Pocan said of the NSA program exposed by Edward Snowden two years ago.
Along with Pocan and Massie, the Thursday gathering drew Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). The lawmakers, many of them privacy zealots with libertarian leanings, discussed the USA Freedom Act, bipartisan legislation that would rein in the bulk collection of telephone records and reauthorize expiring anti-terror surveillance provisions in the PATRIOT Act.
They haven't yet determined whether to introduce their own, stronger legislation or to rally behind amendments to the USA Freedom Act. Among the changes they want to see: making sure restrictions included in the legislation are broad enough to encompass all current and future technologies, and ending the "backdoor" warrantless searches the government requires companies to allow by creating holes in their hardware and software products the NSA uses to snoop. House Speaker John Boehner has signed off on the legislation as passed by Judiciary, and it's going to be a challenge for the reform group to derail it, unless they can get enough bipartisan members to force amendments, or to defeat the bill entirely.
Then there's the Senate side, where the reform legislation has been introduced, but where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is so far insisting that he will only allow a straight reauthorization of the Patriot Act—no reforms, no changes. Thus far, he's got Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley with him, but is likely to encounter pretty significant opposition from both Republicans and Democrats who want to see real reform. Boehner can probably pass his version of the reform bill, but he'd face a real problem getting McConnell's clean reauthorization through, if McConnell can even get it through the Senate.
Right now the House is slated to take the last week of May off, as is the Senate. Between long weekends off and planned recess, there's around a dozen working days for them to figure this out. Which is likely what McConnell is planning on exploiting. He'll likely push this out as long as he can, then create panic over the fact that the provisions are about to expire, allowing for a least a shorter-term clean extension.