Here's a bit more from NYTimes:
Battle Lines in G.O.P. Set Stage for Surveillance Vote
<snip>
But unlike those fights, the Senate’s showdown this weekend over the future of the government’s dragnet of American phone records is not a result of a partisan fracas. It is an ideological battle within the Republican Party, pitting the Senate majority leader against the speaker of the House and, in the Senate, newcomers against long-serving members, and defense hawks against a rising tide of younger, more libertarian-minded members often from Western states.
Senate leaders are expected to try to assemble a compromise surveillance bill on Sunday that can get the required votes to proceed before the authorizing law expires Monday. President Obama and his director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., added more pressure with sharp statements on Friday and Saturday calling for immediate approval of a surveillance bill passed by the House.
<snip>
Even if a compromise can be reached in a rare Sunday session in the Senate, all signs point to at least a temporary expiration on Monday of a key section of the Patriot Act that the government has been using to sweep up vast amounts of telephone “metadata.”
Last month,
the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency. But in the Senate, that measure failed on a procedural vote this month, and efforts to pass a short-term extension collapsed under objections by three senators.
<snip to more info at
link> About the House version:
House Votes to End N.S.A.’s Bulk Phone Data Collection
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, who insists that dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party.
Under the bipartisan bill, which passed 338 to 88, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls made by Americans. However, while the House version of the bill would take the government out of the collection business, it would not deny it access to the information. It would be in the hands of the private sector — almost certainly telecommunications companies like AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, which already keep the records for billing purposes and hold on to them from 18 months to five years.
So for the N.S.A., which has been internally questioning the cost effectiveness of bulk collection for years,
the bill would make the agency’s searches somewhat less efficient, but it would not wipe them out. With the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the spy agencies or the F.B.I. could request data relevant to an investigation. Corporate executives have said that while they would have to reformat some data to satisfy government search requirements, they could most likely provide data quickly.
The legislation would also bar bulk collection of records using other tools like so-called national security letters, which are a kind of administrative subpoena.
<snip to more info at
link>
As you can see, the Democrats are already working on it. It's not perfect; it's a start. It's also real rather than political posturing and grandstanding like paul and his ilk.
Well, if you think NYTimes is a somewhat more reliable than politico, you might see that.
This is a fight amongst repubs. Let them "eat" their own.
= new reply since forum marked as read
