Controversial PATRIOT Act up for renewal in US
WASHINGTON DC — National security officials in the US are preparing for the possibility that the provision authorizing the federal government’s bulk collection of private telephone records, the USA PATRIOT Act, could expire in less than two weeks.
Certain provisions in the PATRIOT Act, brought in after 9/11, allow the National Security Agency to collect the metadata from Americans’ phone calls. But the act expires on 30th June, and Congress is far from agreed on what, if anything, to replace it with.
“Since the Snowden revelations which blew the lid off of over a decade of secrecy, Congress hasn’t done anything. And there is a hook, essentially there’s a forced action with the scheduled expiration of these three PATRIOT act provisions,” American civil rights attorney Shahid Buttar, the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told Rudaw. “We’d really like to see Congress at the very least insist on the scheduled expiration of those provisions, and then do more, by repealing several of the surveillance authorities that will remain on the books.”
However, US intelligence officials insist the surveillance powers they currently have under the PATRIOT Act are necessary to protect Americans.
“The most famous one, or perhaps notorious, is section 215, which is the ability for the collection of metadata on large numbers of people,” James Lewis, the director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Rudaw.
“There are other parts of the PATRIOT Act that have been around for a long time and were reauthorized in it, that include measures that increase the FBI’s ability to monitor mobile telecommunications,” he continued. “If those were to expire it would hamper law enforcement.”
“This is one of the few means we have to track jihadi groups in the US,” Lewis concluded. “There are simply not enough FBI agents to cover every single suspect, and so the only alternative is really communications surveillance.”
Others though, including libertarian US senator and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul, want to block ANY legislation that would extend collection of phone data. Paul spoke for 10 hours against the move on the floor of the Senate on May 20.
“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate, and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now, and I will not let the PATRIOT Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged,” Paul said on the Senate floor.
Paul’s 10-hour speech in Congress on surveillance reflects just how high feelings about this issue are running in the US—but time is also running out, and if Congress doesn’t act, Paul and his fellow opponents of the PATRIOT Act will get what they want—by default.
Certain provisions in the PATRIOT Act, brought in after 9/11, allow the National Security Agency to collect the metadata from Americans’ phone calls. But the act expires on 30th June, and Congress is far from agreed on what, if anything, to replace it with.
“Since the Snowden revelations which blew the lid off of over a decade of secrecy, Congress hasn’t done anything. And there is a hook, essentially there’s a forced action with the scheduled expiration of these three PATRIOT act provisions,” American civil rights attorney Shahid Buttar, the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told Rudaw. “We’d really like to see Congress at the very least insist on the scheduled expiration of those provisions, and then do more, by repealing several of the surveillance authorities that will remain on the books.”
However, US intelligence officials insist the surveillance powers they currently have under the PATRIOT Act are necessary to protect Americans.
“The most famous one, or perhaps notorious, is section 215, which is the ability for the collection of metadata on large numbers of people,” James Lewis, the director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Rudaw.
“There are other parts of the PATRIOT Act that have been around for a long time and were reauthorized in it, that include measures that increase the FBI’s ability to monitor mobile telecommunications,” he continued. “If those were to expire it would hamper law enforcement.”
“This is one of the few means we have to track jihadi groups in the US,” Lewis concluded. “There are simply not enough FBI agents to cover every single suspect, and so the only alternative is really communications surveillance.”
Others though, including libertarian US senator and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul, want to block ANY legislation that would extend collection of phone data. Paul spoke for 10 hours against the move on the floor of the Senate on May 20.
“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate, and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now, and I will not let the PATRIOT Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged,” Paul said on the Senate floor.
Paul’s 10-hour speech in Congress on surveillance reflects just how high feelings about this issue are running in the US—but time is also running out, and if Congress doesn’t act, Paul and his fellow opponents of the PATRIOT Act will get what they want—by default.