In the aftermath of the outrage over the secret spying of Americans exposed by fugitive Edward Snowden, the House and the Senate are on the brink of overhauling the Patriot Act with sweeping bipartisan measures.
Despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell leading a rearguard action to stop the changes, the bills aimed at preventing the government's mass collection of phone and Internet records would usher in a new era of privacy, according to
The New York Times.
The proposed legislation will end a decade of bulk storage of metadata by government spy agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA, that was launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to prevent more terror acts in the United States, albeit at the cost of civil liberties.
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee significantly approved a bipartisan bill that would block parts of the Patriot Act that allowed for the secret domestic spying on millions of Americans, and was almost certain to have the full backing of the lower chamber this month.
An identical bill in the Senate has been winning widespread support on both sides of the aisle, even though McConnell has voiced his fierce opposition to it and is likely to taste defeat for the first time this year as the new majority leader, the Times reported.
The Patriot Act, which is due for reauthorization next month, will be adjusted under the two bills to prevent bulk collection and mass searches allowed by the so-called National Security Letters issued by the FBI.
Instead, the information would be collected and held by phone companies, and could only be retrieved by U.S. intelligence agencies after approval from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts, according to the paper, which said that a panel of privacy and technology experts would advise such hearings.
The controversy has brought together an unlikely collaboration of Democrats and Republicans, ranging from White House officials and House Speaker John Boehner to tea party conservatives like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and libertarians like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
"I believe that the work of the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee has produced a very good package," Boehner said right before the Judiciary Committee voted to back the changes, according to the Times.
Last year, a similar bill passed the House but was voted down in the Senate when it was controlled by Democrats. Now in Republican hands, the Senate has four new senators who backed the legislation when they were in the House last year.
McConnell finds himself diametrically opposed to many of his colleagues, along with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and a small holdout of defense hawks, the Times reported.
Last week potential presidential candidate Jeb Bush incurred possible 2016 rival Rand Paul's wrath by saying during a radio show that the continuation of the NSA's collection of metadata was
"the best part" of the Obama administration.
McConnell has angered his members by proposing an unchanged five-year extension of the Patriot Act, and the majority leader still holds the ability to hold up the bill or soften its impact.
"I don't think he's listening to America," Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said of McConnell. "The seminal question is how much liberty are we going to give up for security? People are on the brink. They're scared out of their wits."
But Burr told the Times, "I think people are reacting to a program they don't know."
When asked about the possibility of defeating the bipartisan bill that appears to keep gathering support in the Senate, Burr admitted, "I've got a big task."
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