Deadline may force compromise on U.S. surveillance law

U.S. Senate Republican leaders insist that spy agencies continue to have access to data on Americans' telephone calls despite a court ruling that the practice is illegal, but aides said on Friday they may have to compromise on proposed reforms of the program before it expires on June 1.

Senate aides said the deadline could force supporters and opponents of the bulk data collection program to work out a deal before May ends. In practice the date may be even earlier as Congress leaves Washington on May 22 for a Memorial Day recess.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader, and Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, defended the data collection shortly after a federal appeals court three-judge panel in New York ruled the practice illegal on Thursday.

"Not only have these tools kept us safe, there has not been a single incidence, not one, of an intentional abuse of them," McConnell said.

McConnell and Burr vowed to fight efforts to scale back the phone surveillance, a counter-terrorism measure in the USA Patriot Act, known as Section 215. They want it extended, as is, through 2020.

Some Republican privacy advocates have joined liberal Democrats to push for an overhaul, or the elimination, of the bulk data collection, which was exposed in 2013 by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who now lives as a fugitive in Russia.

The U.S. House of Representatives votes next week on the USA Freedom Act, a reform bill that would end the bulk collection program and instead give the NSA access to telephone data and other records only when a court finds there is reasonable suspicion about a link to international terrorism.  Read More at compromise on U.S. surveillance law

Deadline may force compromise on U.S. surveillance law

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