A politically diverse group of civil liberties organizations are urging Congress to reject a new bill aimed at making limited changes to the federal government’s ability to collect and store data on Americans phone calls.
Groups such as CREDO Mobile — a San Francisco-based mobile network operator that funds liberal causes — the Republican Liberty Caucus and the Sunlight Foundation say the bipartisan USA Freedom Act only makes modest changes and instead simply puts Congress’ stamp of approval on the government surveillance provisions in the Patriot Act, which are set to expire June 1 without any action.
The coalition is urging members of Congress to oppose the bill, which would place constraints on the bulk collection of telephone records and also reauthorize the anti-terror surveillance provisions in the Patriot Act.
In a letter to Congress dated Wednesday, the groups argue that the current bipartisan effort at reforming surveillance would “eviscerate numerous court challenges to lawless surveillance and provide legal immunization and compensation of companies that provide the government with customers’ private information, even where that company knows it is unlawful.”
Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency employee who became an early whistleblower about government spying programs years before Edward Snowden leaked information about the government’s sweeping bulk data collection, also signed the letter, along with Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who revealed that he helped install NSA equipment within the telecom giant’s network.
The White House has signaled cautious support for the USA Freedom Act, along with a caveat that the president is still looking at the details of the bill. Obama last year came out in support of a reform to the Patriot Act’s controversial 215 bulk collection provision, proposing that it be changed to allow the telecom companies to store the phone data, not the government. The government would need to seek permission from a special court to access it under the president’s plan.
But civil liberty advocates on the Right and Left say both Obama’s proposed changes, as well as those in the USA Freedom Act, would only scratch the surface of the personal privacy violations the Patriot Act authorizes. Instead, they would like lawmakers to allow the entire law to expire.
Under incredible public pressure, the White House and surveillance agencies have telegraphed acquiescence to these “minimal reforms,” they argue.
“The sacrifices made by the USA Freedom Act of 2015 are unacceptable,” they wrote. “The modest changes within this bill, in turn, fail to reform mass surveillance of Americans and others.”
The issue has brought together some of the most liberal and conservative members of Congress who met last week to try to come up with a plan to block the latest set of modest reforms.
The group opposing the USA Freedom Act includes progressive Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and Tea Party adherent Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
