opinion

Massie: Clock ticking to scale back spy powers

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie is a Republican from Garrison, Ky.

Congress faces a critical deadline, and time is running out. On June 1, 2015, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act will expire. The actions of the U.S. Congress between today and June 1st will affect the privacy and liberty of millions of innocent Americans.

The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act was drafted and swiftly passed in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Due to the nature of the crisis, the goal was simply to pass a bill as quickly as possible. Many congressmen did not have an opportunity to thoroughly read, analyze or vet the bill's numerous and lengthy provisions. In fact, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, later declared that he was shocked by how the law was used to spy on innocent Americans.

Congress and the American people now know, thanks to whistleblower leaks, that federal agencies like the National Security Agency regularly perform mass surveillance on Americans without bothering to obtain a warrant. As constitutional law scholar Randy Barnett wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The National Security Agency has seized from private companies voluminous data on the phone and Internet usage of all U.S. citizens. ... This dangerously violates the most fundamental principles of our republican form of government." He concludes that "[s]uch indiscriminate data seizures are the epitome of 'unreasonable,' akin to the 'general warrants' issued by the Crown to authorize searches of Colonial Americans."

One of the tools that enables this warrantless, mass harvesting of call information and data records – Section 215 of the Patriot Act – is one of the three provisions set to expire on June 1. This looming deadline presents the best opportunity we have in the foreseeable future to stop lawless surveillance. That is why Rep. Mark Pocan and I recently introduced the bipartisan "Surveillance State Repeal Act" (H.R. 1466). H.R. 1466 would repeal the entire Patriot Act, as well as its companion, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. I believe the best option is to repeal both of these bills and start over. If members of Congress believe that individual provisions of either the Patriot Act or the FISA Amendments Act are critical to our national security, then we should bring each separate provision to the floor, allow full debate and schedule an up-or-down vote on each provision. This process would also give the American people an opportunity to fully understand exactly what each section of each bill would supposedly accomplish.

Some claim it's too late to roll back these surveillance programs. I disagree. We can win this fight, as recent legislative victories indicate.

For example, in 2013, Rep. Justin Amash led the charge against Section 215 of the Patriot Act by offering an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. His amendment would have ended the indiscriminate collection of Americans' telephone records. He came very close to victory. The Amash amendment lost by a mere handful of votes, and I believe he would have won if misinformation about his amendment had not been published on the eve of the vote.

Amash's effort set the groundwork for a subsequent legislative victory. Last year, my amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations bill, co-sponsored with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and many others, passed the House by an overwhelming bipartisan, veto-proof majority. The amendment, which passed by a vote of 293 to 123, would have banned warrantless surveillance currently performed via the authority of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Although my amendment did not specifically address Section 215 of the Patriot Act, it would have put an end to surveillance that is arguably worse than the collection of records allowed under Section 215 (as bad as that is). Section 702 allows the government warrantless access to actual content of Americans' communications, including emails and phone calls. Sadly, despite my legislative victory, congressional leadership refused to include the amendment language in the final version of last year's government spending bill.

The votes on both the Amash and Massie amendments demonstrate that there is overwhelming support for ending mass surveillance, despite what the establishment in both Congress and our federal intelligence agencies claim.

The Founders of this great nation fought and died to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act authorize. What happens between now and June 1 depends on the American people. It is imperative that every freedom-loving American demand an end to these unconstitutional programs. At the very least, the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act should not be renewed. After that, the entire Patriot Act should be repealed so we can start over and establish law enforcement programs that respect our Constitution.