An unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives in Congress has joined forces to take down the Patriot Act in a major push to prevent the U.S. government from secretly spying on millions of Americans.
According to
Politico, the two diverse groups of privacy advocates met last week for lunch with one distinct joint purpose in mind — to stop the reauthorization of the controversial legislation, which is being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The Patriot Act, installed after the 9/11 attacks and due to expire at the end of the month, includes key provisions permitting the National Security Agency (NSA) to keep tabs on Americans by the mass collection of domestic phone and Internet data, which was first exposed by fugitive Edward Snowden.
Calling for a sweeping overhaul of the law during the meeting were such ideologically opposing politicians as Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, a card-carrying ACLU member from liberal Madison, Wisconsin, and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a tea party activist from a conservative area of Kentucky, Politico reported.
"The collection of data is still way too wide and can still be too easily abused," Pocan said of the NSA program.
And Massie said, "People are going to have to make a decision if there are enough real reforms in there to make it worth reauthorizing the Patriot Act. I don’t think the reforms are significant enough.
"The onus is really on [Republican and Democratic leaders] to have something in place if this is going to run out and they need to reauthorize something. We’re trying to figure out how to get a better, stronger [bill] that protects privacy rights."
The congressmen, along with GOP Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan and Democratic Reps. Zoe Lofgren of California and Jared Polis of Colorado, hope to replace the Patriot Act with the bipartisan USA Freedom Act, which would continue to target terrorists in the homeland while preventing the invasion of privacy into American lives.
The oddball coalition agreed that a recent measure passed overwhelmingly by the House Judiciary Committee and backed by House leaders did not go far enough.
"There are a lot of improvements that we would like to see jointly, from both the Democratic and Republican side," Pocan said.
The USA Freedom Act, which has been approved by House Speaker John Boehner, is expected to easily pass the House.
The Obama administration, which wants to see an end to bulk data collection, is also supporting the bill. But the White House faces fierce opposition to such legislation in the Senate from McConnell and other Republican senators.
"The clean renewal [of the Patriot Act] that has been put forward by Sen. McConnell does not include those reforms" that the president supports, says White House press secretary Josh Earnest, referring to the mass spying on Americans.
"And the president was quite definitive about the need to make those kinds of reforms a top priority."
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