Watered Down NSA Reform Bill Passes House

By Dan Roberts and Karen McVeigh, Guardian UK

23 May 14

Privacy advocates believe the USA Freedom Act represents watered-down version of original proposals

he first legislation aimed specifically at curbing US surveillance abuses revealed by Edward Snowden passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, with a majority of both Republicans and Democrats.

But last-minute efforts by intelligence community loyalists to weaken key language in the USA Freedom Act led to a larger-than-expected rebellion by members of Congress, with the measure passing by 303 votes to 121.

The bill's authors concede it was watered down significantly in recent days, but insist it will still outlaw the practice of bulk collection of US telephone metadata by the NSA first revealed by Snowden.

Some members of Congress were worried that the bill will fail to prevent the National Security Agency from continuing to collect large amounts of data on ordinary US citizens.

“Perfect is rarely possible in politics, and this bill is no exception,” said Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, who has led efforts on the House judiciary committee to rein in the NSA.

“In order to preserve core operations of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the administration insisted on broadening certain authorities and lessening certain restrictions. Some of the changes raise justifiable concerns. I don’t blame people for losing trust in their government, because the government violated their trust.”

Despite the changes, Sensenbrenner and other influential reformers such as ranking committee Democrat John Conyers backed passage of the final bill saying it was an “opportunity to make a powerful statement: Congress does not support bulk collection.”

But the revised language lost the support of several influential members of the judiciary committee who had previously voted for it, including Republicans Darrell Issa, Ted Poe and Raul Labrador and Democrat Zoe Lofgren.

Issa also chairs the House oversight committee. Adam Smith, the most senior Democrat on the armed services committee, also voted against the bill.

“Regrettably, we have learned that the intelligence community will run a truck through ambiguity,” said Lofgren during an hour and 15 minutes of debate which preceded the vote. No amendments were allowed.

After the vote, Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: “The bill is littered with loopholes. The problem right now, especially after multiple revisions, is that it doesn't effectively end mass surveillance.”

In a statement, Zeke Johnson, the director of Amnesty International USA's security and human rights program, said the House had “failed to deliver serious surveillance reform”.

“People inside and outside the US would remain at risk of dragnet surveillance. The Senate should pass much stronger reforms ensuring greater transparency, robust judicial review, equal rights for non-US persons, and a clear, unambiguous ban on mass spying. President Obama need not wait. He can and should implement such safeguards today.”

The size of the rebellion and the seniority of the rebels may support efforts to tighten language in the legislation as it makes its way to the Senate.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee and the lead Democratic author of the Freedom Act, said that the actions of the house in passing it was an “important step towards reforming our nation's surveillance authorities”which “few could have predicted less than a year ago.”

However, in a statement issued on Thursday, Leahy expressed disappointment that the bill, which he had introduced jointly with Sensenbrenner in October, had been diluted.

He said: “Today’s action in the House continues the bipartisan effort to restore Americans’ civil liberties. But I was disappointed that the legislation passed today does not include some of the meaningful reforms contained in the original USA Freedom Act. I will continue to push for these important reforms when the Senate judiciary committee considers the USA Freedom Act next month.”

Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who has waged an often lonely campaign against NSA surveillance, said he opposed the House bill in the form that passed on Thursday. "I am gravely concerned that the changes that have been made to the House version of this bill have watered it down so far that it fails to protect Americans from suspicionless mass surveillance," he said.

He said the Senate version of the bill remained strong, and that he hoped that its provisions could be preserved.

California representative Adam Schiff was one of several Democrats who said they were pleased that the “bill ends bulk collection” but hoped there were opportunities to strengthen its language on the way to the Senate, particularly to restore an adversarial role for lawyers to argue against the NSA during secret court rulings on surveillance.

But the new language was warmly received by leaders of the House intelligence committee who had backed a separate bill that would have strengthened government surveillance rights and had briefly appeared to have been outmanoeuvred by reformers.

Republican committee chairman Mike Rogers said the US had been “held hostage by a traitor” after the Snowden revelations and praised the new bill as a “responsible solution” to the problem of how to preserve the ability of intelligence agencies to conduct necessary surveillance.

Ranking Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger said critics of the new bill, including most civil liberties campaigners who are anxious it will do little to stop indiscriminate surveillance, were “trying to scare you with monsters under the bed”.

The bill was the first vote on a NSA related matter in either the House or Senate since last July, when Republican congressman Justin Amash failed by 205-217 votes to pass an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have stripped funding for bulk surveillance.

The revised USA Freedom Act was supported by the White House. Obama had urged for a solution to ending bulk collection of telephone metadata in ways that would not unduly constrain the NSA.