The Senate has killed the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would have restricted the NSA’s widespread surveillance program. Establishment Republicans argued that the USA Freedom Act would have empowered terrorists like the Islamic State, whereas Tea-Party Republicans argued that the bill did not go far enough to curb the NSA’s ability to spy on Americans. The fierce opposition left the bill just two votes shy of breaking a Republican filibuster and bringing it to debate on the floor.
The final vote was 58-42 in favor of opening debate on the NSA bill. Unfortunately for privacy advocates, the Senate requires 60 votes to break a filibuster. Opposition was led by Mitch McConnell, who said the NSA still needed its program to stop the Islamic State, according to RT .
“At a moment when the United States is conducting a military campaign to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (the Islamic State), now is not the time to be considering legislation that takes away the exact tools we need to combat (the Islamic State).”
Those sentiments were echoed by fellow Republican Marco Rubio, who said that “God forbid that tomorrow we wake up to the news that a member of ISIL is in the United States.” He added that if the NSA cannot track phone calls “that plot may go forward — and that would be a horrifying result.”
Democrat Patrick Leahy, lead sponsor of the USA Freedom Act, countered by saying, “If this (NSA Surveillence) was important to stop ISIL, ISIL never would have started.”
Even though it wasn’t enough, the majority of the Senators appeared to agree with Leahy, including libertarian Republicans like the bill’s co-sponsor, Ted Cruz. Others on the libertarian side were not impressed and voted against the Freedom Act because it did not go far enough, like Senator Rand Paul.
According to the Huffington Post , Paul said that the bill was simply too weak for him to support.
As the Guardian reports, the bill was significantly watered down from the original. Although the Freedom Act would have ended the NSA’s metadata gathering program , measures to prevent the FBI or NSA from going through international communications databases looking for American’s information without a warrant were taken out. The bill would have also put a privacy advocate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), but in the latest version of the Freedom Act, that advocate would be nearly powerless.
Rand Paul has another way to stop big brother though.
He proposes that civil liberties will still win in the end; next year Congress can refuse to re-authorize Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is the basis for the NSA’s surveillance powers.
Senator Paul’s strategy builds on Congress’ strength. Whereas doing something, like passing the Freedom Act, is nearly impossible thanks to partisan strife and the filibuster, failing to do something, like re-authorize part of the Patriot Act, is easy thanks to partisan strife and the filibuster.
America will have to wait until next year to see if that plan is good enough to justify killing the Senate NSA bill.
[Image Credit: Gage Skidmore /Wikimedia Commons]
