House committee urges US government to get behind NSA reform bill
Source: The Guardian
Members of Congress who want to end the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans’ phone data sharply warned the Obama administration on Tuesday to get behind a bill to end the controversial practice, or risk losing the counter-terrorism powers provided by the post-9/11 Patriot Act.
Deriding the paucity of legislative alternatives after President Obama's announcement last month that he wants to transfer the responsibility for bulk collection out of the NSA, congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, the co-sponsor of the USA Freedom Act, told deputy attorney general James Cole at a House judiciary committee hearing that "you will get nothing" if the administration does not endorse the bill.
Asked why the Justice Department had not taken a position on the bill, Cole said: "The Department of Justice is a big place."
...
John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the panel, warned that permitting bulk data collection to continue unabated risked congressional support for the entire portion of the Patriot Act the government claims authorizes it, known as Section 215, a provision set to expire on 1 June 2015. "We should address bulk collection today, or we risk losing all of Section 215 this time next year," Conyers said.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/house-committee-us-government-nsa-reform-obama
Always good to read about Conyers. I remember his reporting in 2004.
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