{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://web.archive.org/web/20131106031330/http://sensenbrenner.house.gov:80/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=357127", "NSA bills set up a choice in Congress: End bulk collection of phone records or endorse it", "2013-10-28", "2013", "2013-10", "Republican", "House", "WI", "F. Sensenbrenner", "S000244", "web.archive.org", null, null, "legacy", "After nearly five months of controversy and debate, members of Congress may face a clear choice over the National Security Agency\u2019s program to collect the phone records of nearly every American: endorse it or shut it down.On Tuesday, lawmakers are expected to introduce the first comprehensive NSA legislation since the agency\u2019s phone records program was disclosed in June. The proposal, from a bipartisan coalition in the House and the Senate, would effectively halt \u201cbulk\u201d records collection under the USA Patriot Act. Another bipartisan group of lawmakers is preparing legislation that would preserve the program while strengthening privacy protections. The dueling proposals are setting the stage for what could be a fierce political showdown over the NSA\u2019s authorities. NSA Director Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. \u2014 who are set to testify before Congress on Tuesday \u2014 have defended the phone records program as a vital counterterrorism tool. But privacy advocates and critics on Capitol Hill, led by a diverse group of liberal Democrats and libertarian conservatives, have described it as a gross infringement on civil liberties. \u201cThere\u2019s no sugarcoating it. These two trains \u2014 one that codifies bulk collection and the other that outlaws it \u2014 are on a collision course,\u201d said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group. President Obama has called for reforms to restore Americans\u2019 and foreign allies\u2019 trust, including \u201cappropriate\u201d changes to the program collecting data from Americans. \u201cJust because we can get information doesn\u2019t necessarily always mean that we should,\u201d he said at a news conference in Russia last month. White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Monday that she could not comment on legislation that had not been introduced yet. But in general, she said, the administration supports changes to achieve \u201cgreater oversight, greater transparency and constraints on the use of this authority, as well as measures to enhance public confidence\u201d in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the FISA court) process. \u201cWe are working closely with Congress on these important reforms.\u201d In July, the House narrowly defeated a measure to defund the phone records collection program. Since then, fresh disclosures about the NSA\u2019s activities and capabilities, based on leaks from former agency contractor Edward Snowden and declassified court opinions, have continued to spark controversy \u2014 and have built support for reining in the surveillance. The phone call database contains billions of records of numbers dialed, as well as the lengths and times of calls, but not their content. \u201cThis is going to be a huge battle because it is fundamentally about whether or not the oversight structure that we set up in the 1970s \u2014 to use Congress as a proxy for public oversight so we can have the secrecy of the programs \u2014 can be sustained,\u201d said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior homeland security policy official in the George W. Bush administration. The two sets of legislation reflect different judgments about what the proper balance between security and privacy is and ought to be. On one hand, there is the approach taken by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman; Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), a former House Judiciary Committee chairman; and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. They would end the mass collection of phone data by requiring the government to prove to a court that it is seeking call records relevant to either an agent of a foreign power who is the subject of a terrorism investigation or someone with a link to that agent. Such a requirement would make bulk collection impossible, the proponents say. The legislation also would require a warrant to deliberately search for the e-mail and phone call content of Americans that is collected as part of a surveillance program targeting foreigners located overseas. \u201cThe government has not made its case that bulk collection of domestic phone records is an effective counterterrorism tool, especially in light of the intrusion on American privacy,\u201d Leahy said at a hearing this month. Some experts say a viable alternative would be to have phone companies give the NSA data from searches based on phone numbers linked to terrorism. \u201cThis process could easily be automated to make it virtually instantaneous,\u201d Edward W. Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor, said in a court brief filed Friday in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the phone program\u2019s constitutionality. On the other hand, the approach taken by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, focuses on increasing transparency and privacy protections. The intelligence committee leaders have not introduced their respective bills, but Feinstein has outlined the changes under consideration. They include limiting access to the call database; codifying the requirement that analysts have a \u201creasonable articulable suspicion\u201d that a phone number is associated with terrorism to query the database; requiring that the FISA court promptly review each such determination; and limiting the retention period for phone records, now five years. \u201cThis program is constitutional,\u201d Feinstein said at a hearing on the issue last month. \u201cIt is legal. . . . I also believe that collecting timely and actionable intelligence is critical to our nation\u2019s security.\u201d The Intelligence Committee\u2019s bill, she said, would also expand the NSA\u2019s authority to allow it to continue intercepting for three days the phone calls and e-mails of an overseas foreign target who had entered the United States. That would give the government a chance to go to the FISA court to seek a traditional individual warrant to continue the collection. If the warrant was denied, the intercepts would have to be deleted. The bill would also require Senate confirmation of the NSA director and inspector general. Both approaches have at least one element in common: a recommendation, endorsed by Obama, that there be a special advocate to promote privacy interests before the FISA court. The proposal to end bulk collection, if it is allowed to reach the floor, could succeed in the House, where a similar effort failed by only 12 votes in July. At least eight lawmakers who voted against the July measure and two who did not vote on it are now in favor of Leahy and Sensenbrenner\u2019s approach, congressional aides said. \u201cThe public is justifiably concerned about the fact that everybody\u2019s phone calls apparently have been snared in this \u2014 even people who have no relationship to terrorism,\u201d Sensenbrenner said in an interview. \u201cBut what has come out since the end of July, I think, is going to tip the scales in favor of a significant NSA reform.\u201d Rosenzweig, for his part, said he thinks \u201cthe insurgent movement\u201d will not succeed in ending bulk collection, \u201cbut I am quite sure that they are going to wind up getting changes \u2014 that something will happen.\u201d View online, here.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20131106031330/http://sensenbrenner.house.gov:80/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=357127"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4147516340017319, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}