Supporters of a stalled congressional effort to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ metadata are looking warily at an alternative proposal by a key NSA advocate purporting to seek the same goal.



This week, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, who represents the Maryland district home to the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters, came out in favor of a remedy for the controversial surveillance.

Ruppersberger, in interviews with the Washington Post, National Journal and Politico, said he was working to craft a proposal that would require court orders for government requests for Americans’ phone records – perhaps on an individual basis – from the telephone companies, without requiring the companies to expand retention of their customer records beyond current practice.

It’s an idea that on its face aligns with what privacy advocates have wanted since the Guardian exposed the NSA bulk phone records collection in June, thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden.

But his idea also attracted suspicion. Not only has Ruppersberger been a staunch advocate for the NSA – and a fervent critic of Snowden – but his proposal would compete with the civil-libertarian alternative, the USA Freedom Act, that has 163 co-sponsors in both congressional chambers and would go further than Ruppersberger’s effort, as initially described.

Ruppersberger’s office concedes that the details of the proposal, which are crucial in the arcane world of surveillance authorities, are still being worked out – something giving privacy advocates pause.

On the other hand, sources said, Ruppersberger’s evolving position represents what one called a “huge step forward” toward an outright end to bulk domestic metadata collection. Ruppersberger’s credibility with the NSA might also be an asset for such an effort.

In a statement to the Guardian on Friday, Ruppersberger signaled that surveillance “reform” was necessary, framing it as critical to restoring confidence in the NSA.

“I believe that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be reformed. We must improve the American public’s confidence in, and perception of, our national security programs, by increasing transparency, strengthening oversight, and safeguarding civil liberties,” Ruppersberger said.

“I also believe that any proposal to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must preserve critical intelligence tools that protect our country and its allies. I am concerned with any approach that would eliminate this important intelligence tool and make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, without providing a workable alternative.”

Ruppersberger is a close partner of the intelligence committee’s chairman, congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan, who has earlier signaled outright opposition to taking the phone records database away from the NSA.

But several sources were skeptical of any effort that would move surveillance reform through the intelligence committees instead of the judiciary committees, which have been more concerned with privacy issues. The judiciary committee, which has yet to move on the USA Freedom Act, insists on primary legislative jurisdiction over surveillance law.

The Obama administration has yet to take an outright position on the USA Freedom Act, an ambivalence that several members of Congress consider the equivalent of a rejection several months after the bill was introduced.

On Thursday, Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican on the judiciary committee, called on Ruppersberger to embrace the USA Freedom Act that Sensenbrenner co-authored.

“I urge him to cosponsor the USA Freedom Act. It strikes the proper balance between security and privacy, and I am confident it has the votes to pass,” Sensenbrenner said in a statement to which Ruppersberger has yet to respond.

With the details still undetermined in Ruppersberger’s proposal, it is difficult to know how far the new effort would go in requiring court-ordered individual suspicion to access phone records, as well as requiring a specific “relevance” connection to an ongoing terrorism investigation, as required in the Patriot Act and the proposed USA Freedom Act – without which, privacy advocates argue, would leave the door open to dubious searches of government records.

“This certainly doesn’t go as far as the USA Freedom Act,” said Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s surveillance lobbyist.

“Of course, the devil will be in the details. We’re going to see if we can get an advance copy and talk to the sponsors.”