Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee are calling on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up an NSA reform bill this month now that a court has ruled the program is illegal.
“The dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records is unnecessary and ineffective, and now a federal appellate court has found that the program is illegal,” Leahy and Lee said in a statement. “Congress should not reauthorize a bulk collection program that the court has found to violate the law. We will not consent to any extension of this program.”
Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee while Lee, a Republican from Utah, heads the GOP’s Steering Committee.
The two are co-authors of the USA Freedom Act, which adds significant restrictions to the government’s controversial telephone surveillance program that was authorized in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House is scheduled to take up the measure next week, where it is likely to pass with bipartisan support, but in the Senate, the future is less certain.
McConnell last month introduced a five-year reauthorization of the current surveillance program, which expires June 1, and it makes no changes to it.
Other Republicans also tell the Washington Examiner they want to leave the program intact in order to ensure the government has the capability to detect and prevent domestic terrorism.
The Leahy/Lee bill would end bulk collection of data and require more oversight of the program.
On Thursday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a 97-page ruling that found the surveillance law does not legally permit bulk data collection.
