Good news, everyone. Winner of the
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, the Patriot Act, has...well, partly expired.
The bad news? The 'partly' is pretty small:
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They may be. But they are far from the only tools in the counterterrorism arsenal, and if they are no longer law come Monday, the United States will still have plenty of authorities to collect intelligence on jihadist and foreign spies.
For starters, there will be what’s left of the Patriot Act itself. One former U.S. intelligence official told The Daily ***** that Section 214 of the law, which allows so-called “pen register/trap & trace,” could be used to collect phone and even email records. That would not only cover the gap from the expiring NSA program that collects the phone records of Americans’ landline calls, but potentially expand the government’s collection. (No wonder the NSA largely views the bill that would reform the Patriot Act as a major win.)
And of course, it looks like we're getting the Diet Patriot Act soon anyway:
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The Senate did vote overwhelmingly to advance the USA Freedom Act, a House-****** surveillance reform bill that GOP leaders opposed but were ****** to accept given the lack of time and other alternatives. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) refused to allow that measure to be adopted in time to replace the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions.
The USA Freedom Act easily cleared a filibuster in a 77-17 vote that appeared to set the stage for eventual passage. But it was not the outcome envisioned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: He had hoped to pass a temporary extension of current law to avoid a midnight shutdown of three PATRIOT Act programs, including the controversial “bulk data” phone record collection program.
But Paul wouldn’t relent, so those initiatives have at least temporarily lapsed, a troubling development for Senate Republicans in just their fifth month in the majority.
Good on Rand Paul. Maybe it's grandstanding, maybe it's playing up for his presidential aspirations - regardless of the motive, I agree with his efforts. You can get information on the USA FREEDOM Act here:
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(including the House vote).
