This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs.
— Mitch McConnell, Senate GOP leader, before the Senate on Tuesday voted against a bill to reform NSA spying. McConnell and the many other mostly Republican senators who voted against the USA Freedom Act say that ending bulk collection of Americans phone records — and requiring warrants when searching terror suspects records — would harm the nation s anti-terrorism efforts.
What s next for the legislation, which fell two votes short of the 60 needed to advance it? The legal authority that allows for the NSA s bulk collection of phone records will expire in June, so the issue will remain hot in the next session of Congress — when the Senate will be controlled by the GOP. Not that all Republicans opposed the bill for the same reasons. A key Republican senator, Rand Paul, voted against the bill because he said it didn t go far enough to protect Americans civil liberties.
From Hillicon Valley: Kevin Bankston, policy director at the Open Technology Institute who supports the bill, said after the vote that Republicans have set up the GOP for an ugly intra-party fight over surveillance reform next year.
The bill — written by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont in response to the revelations of mass NSA spying based on the Edward Snowden leaks — was backed by tech giants such as Apple and Google, as well as the Obama administration.
Photo of Mitch McConnell by Win McNamee/Getty Images
