Sen. Patrick Leahy has joined forces with a prominent House Republican, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, on a new piece of legislation that would prevent the government from collecting communications records of Americans en masse.
Under the bold moniker, the USA Freedom Act, Leahy and Sensenbrenner propose a set of reforms to rein in the domestic side of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program.
The lawmakers introduced identical versions of the bill in the Senate and House on Tuesday.
The legislation would end bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, by requiring that the government show that records are connected to a foreign agent or a particular investigation before gathering them.
It comes nearly four months after The Guardian, followed by other outlets, first published an ongoing series of stories on the NSA’s surveillance programs, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The USA Freedom Act also makes changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), requiring a court order to search for Americans’ online communications that have been amassed as part of a warrant for a foreign individual’s records. This, according to Leahy’s office, will seal a loophole that allowed the government to obtain an American’s records without a warrant by seizing the records of a foreigner with whom the individual had communicated.
During his introduction of the bill on the Senate floor, Leahy picked up on a theme he has raised during the two hearings he has held on the subject as Senate Judiciary chair — mistrust of the Obama administration’s claim that the metadata collection is key to preventing terrorist attacks.
“The government has not made a compelling case that this program is an effective counterterrorism tool, especially when balanced against the intrusion on Americans’ privacy,” Leahy said.
The legislation also creates the position of a “Special Advocate” to monitor the FISA court’s secret hearings, and it requires greater disclosure of court opinions.
Leahy has made several other legislative attempts at reining in the government’s surveillance apparatus, but his latest effort takes a more sweeping approach, and it enjoys wider-spread congressional support. The bill has 16 cosponsors in the Senate and 70 in the House.
The American Civil Liberties Union supports the bill — it states on its website that while the proposal “does not fix every problem,” it is an “important first step and it deserves broad support.”
Amidst a list of other civil liberties-minded organizations that have signed on to the proposal, is another less probable backer — the National Rifle Association.
Leahy and Sensenbrenner helped pen the original Patriot Act, which the NSA cites as the legal basis for its phone record program. In a co-written Politico piece, published Tuesday, the two lawmakers point to this as proof of their intelligence credentials.
