14 DAY TRIAL // Authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner and Patrick Leahy are doing their best to make up for the loopholes the NSA found in the document that stands at the base of the entire surveillance program the intelligence agency has set up.
The two politicians wrote a piece for Politico, explaining some things about their brand new initiative, the USA Freedom Act, which aims to put an end to dragnet collection of telephone records.
“Our bill also ensures that this program will not simply be restarted under other legal authorities, and includes new oversight, auditing and public reporting requirements,” the two wrote about their new legal project.
Since one of the main arguments the intelligence agency has in keeping the programs running is national security.
“We do not underestimate the threat that our country faces, and we agree that Congress must equip the intelligence community with the necessary and appropriate tools to keep us safe. But Congress did not enact FISA and the Patriot Act to give the government boundless surveillance powers that could sweep in the data of countless innocent Americans. If all our phone records are relevant to counterterrorism investigations, what else could be?” they note in their article.
The bill Sensenbrenner introduced in the Congress on Tuesday has some 60 co-sponsors, including some that opposed in the July vote to curb the bulk phone record collection.
The National Security Agency leader, General Keith Alexander, has already expressed his opposition to any type of new legislation aimed at putting a stop to the agency’s mass surveillance efforts.
Furthermore, he even said that he’d rather take the public beating from the media and the public rather than put the country at risk, which is what closing down the program would do.