Politics

Senate punts on Patriot Act

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate failed to find a path forward on how to deal with the government's bulk collection of phone records, passing neither of two bills on the table in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Alaska's senators were divided in their votes. Sen. Dan Sullivan went both ways. He stuck with Republican party leaders, voting for a two-month reauthorization of the Patriot Act. He also voted in favor of the so-called USA Freedom Act, a measure passed by the House that would limit the National Security Agency's surveillance authorities. Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposed a two-month extension and voted in favor of the bill to revise the program.

At issue is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, allowing the National Security Agency to gather metadata on American citizens' phone records. The provisions expire on May 31, while Congress is out for a week-long Memorial Day recess. The House passed a bill to revise the law May 13. They closed up shop and left town Thursday night, while the Senate still struggled over what approach to take.

With the Senate passing neither of its bills, the path forward remains unclear. The program's authority will likely lapse while lawmakers are at home. No compromise between Republican leaders in the House and Senate has yet emerged. The Senate will return at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 30, with hours to go before the data collection program's authority sunsets.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was staunchly in favor of continuing the program for another two months while negotiations continued, if not indefinitely. But that was in contrast to House Republicans and many others who wanted to see changes to the law to limit government spying on citizens. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is running for president, vehemently opposed extending the Patriot Act and filibustered on the Senate floor for about 11 hours, until just before midnight Thursday. That held up a vote on a major trade bill and an extension on transportation infrastructure funding. When a reporter wished Murkowski a happy birthday in the halls Friday night, she said jokingly that the evening wasn't quite what she'd planned.

By the time McConnell called for a vote on the two competing Patriot Act bills, at nearly 1 a.m. Saturday, neither camp had managed to secure the 60 votes necessary for passage, despite long hours of wrangling and dispute on and off the Senate floor.

The Senate voted 57-42 for HR 2048, limiting the surveillance program, falling short of the 60 votes needed for passage. Soon after, the upper chamber voted 45-54 on S 1357, the bill to reauthorize expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for two months.

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Both of Alaska's senators voted for the Senate version of the House-passed "reform" bill -- two of only 12 Republicans, compared with 44 Democrats voting in favor.

The same bill passed the House by an unusual bipartisan majority -- 338-88. Rep. Don Young did not co-sponsor that bill but did vote for its passage.

"Like many Americans, I was extremely troubled by our government's collection of phone data from law-abiding Americans," Young said in a statement Friday. The longtime lawmaker said he has "consistently voted against extending key parts of the Patriot Act" because they are "too broad and could be abused by government personnel, as we are now seeing."

"The line between civil liberty and national security is often tested, and I am not alone in thinking that this leaked NSA program blurs that line considerably," Young said.

Murkowski, who has also been lobbying to change the law for several years, co-sponsored the Senate version of the USA Freedom Act. In 2011, she was one of just four Republicans and 23 senators overall who voted against reauthorization of the Patriot Act provisions.

Murkowski voted to extend Patriot Act provisions in 2005 and 2008, though she was one of the first of a few Republicans in the Senate to advocate reforming NSA spy practices, introducing revisions to laws regulating electronic surveillance in 2003 and co-sponsoring other reform efforts in 2005.

"The government's surveillance efforts need to be seriously rethought," she said after the vote Saturday. "While I understand the new reality we face against a complicated terrorist network, I believe American lives and our privacy rights can still be protected by implementing some important reforms."

"The general rule should not be for the government to track everyone we call on our home phones or cellphones; instead, we need a targeted approach that ensures we focus on those would cause us harm," Murkowski said.

Sullivan has less solid views on the matter and also voted in favor of a two-month reauthorization, along with 42 other Republicans and just two Democrats.

"Sen. Sullivan is a staunch protector of civil liberties, and along with fellow Alaskans, he's particularly concerned with government overreach and intrusion into the lives of individuals," his spokesman Mike Anderson said on Friday. "He continues to gather the facts and discuss the issue with his colleagues."

Sullivan's vote in favor of an extension aligns him with all but two GOP members of the Armed Services Committee, led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Sullivan has aligned himself with McCain and others in the early months of his first term, focusing heavily on military and foreign affairs issues.

The issue of NSA surveillance -- which received just 20 seconds of Senate discussion in 2010 -- has emerged as one of unusual bedfellows, with President Barack Obama in agreement with House Republicans.

The House bill "was a compromise proposal that was painstakingly crafted with the significant input of the intelligence community," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a press briefing Friday. "After thousands of hours of meetings and painstaking work on what everyone would acknowledge is a very complicated policy issue, a reasonable bipartisan compromise emerged," he said of the House bill. "The point is, the hard work on this has been done."

If the Senate did pass the House bill, the president would sign it immediately, Earnest said, warning of the security risks of allowing the program to lapse entirely. There "is no plan B. These are authorities that Congress must legislate," Earnest said.

The USA Freedom Act wouldn't remove NSA's authority entirely. It would put the onus on telecom companies to collect the data, and require warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the government to gather it.

Critics say that the process has holes, since it doesn't require the companies to keep metadata for future searches. Others argue that's a non-issue, since telecom companies typically maintain the data on call information anyway.

National Security Agency officials have indicated that without a clear plan for renewing authorities by Friday, "they will need to begin taking steps to unwind the program to ensure that they continue to stay in compliance with the congressional authorization that was passed three years ago," Earnest said.

Meanwhile, the program for collecting bulk data on telephone phone records was ruled illegal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit earlier this month. Challenges to the law are under consideration in two other federal appeals courts.

Erica Martinson

Erica Martinson is Alaska Dispatch News' Washington, DC reporter, and she covers the legislation, regulation and litigation that impact the Last Frontier.  Erica came to ADN after years as a reporter covering energy at POLITICO. Before that, she covered environmental policy at a DC trade publication and worked at several New York dailies.

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