An NSA reform bill may have died in the Senate last month by just two votes, but not all lawmakers have given up.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is now pushing the Secure Data Act, which would forbid the government from requiring that software companies provide them “backdoor” access to user data. Lofgren had already passed a block on backdoor surveillance as an amendment to the “CRomnibus” spending bill” but it has since been axed from the package.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) is promoting a similar move in the Senate.
FBI Director James Comey has called on technology companies to provide the government better access to user data, suggesting that encryption has made prying into customer records too difficult for intelligence agencies. “The more we as a society rely on these devices, the more important they are to law enforcement and public safety officials,” Comey said earlier this year.
“Strong encryption and sound computer security is the best way to keep Americans’ data safe from hackers and foreign threats,” Wyden countered in a statement about his version of the bill. “It is the best way to protect our constitutional rights at a time when a person’s whole life can often be found on his or her smartphone.”
But there’s not a lot of hope of it passing any time soon. Aides to both members of Congress told the National Journal that the legislation “was largely to set goalposts for negotiations next year.”
Several Patriot Act provisions are set to expire in 2015, and advocates of NSA reform have quarreled amongst themselves on how to leverage this. The USA Freedom Act, the bill recently voted down in the Senate, would have extended those provisions in exchange for some small reforms to the NSA’s ability to collect metadata. But Sen. Rand Paul refused to vote for the bill, saying he could not endorse a vote enabling the Patriot Act.
Meanwhile Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) , a cosponsor of the USA Freedom Act, is calling on President Obama to end the bulk data collection his bill attempted to restrict. The White House supported Leahy’s bill, largely as a means to ensure that the Patriot Act provisions would not expire.
“The President can end the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records once and for all by not seeking reauthorization of this program by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Court, and once again, I urge him to do just that,” the senator said in a statement. “Doing so would not be a substitute for comprehensive surveillance reform legislation — but it would be an important first step.”
