Fresh attempts to prevent controversial National Security Agency surveillance powers expiring this weekend emerged on Tuesday, only to quickly run into opposition from privacy campaigners in Congress.



Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, a hawkish member of the intelligence committee, has proposed the new legislation to try to win over a handful of wavering Republicans who stood in the way of more ambitious reform efforts during a showdown last week.

But Feinstein’s bill, first reported by the Empty Wheel blog, rolls back a number of key provisions in the USA Freedom Act, which fell three senators short of the 60 needed to proceed in a 57-42 vote in the early hours of Friday morning, and may complicate rather than aid the painful process of building consensus.

The USA Freedom Act seeks to ban the NSA from collecting American telephone data in bulk, a practice first revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, and relies on the government seeking specific court orders to obtain information from phone companies on a case-by-case basis instead.

Feinstein is one of the NSA’s staunchest Capitol Hill defenders. The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, itself a bastion of NSA support, Feinstein in 2013 offered a proposal to entrench the NSA’s domestic authorities as an alternative to the Freedom Act, which at the time contained stronger privacy protections and transparency guarantees than the version the House passed earlier this month.



Feinstein’s current proposed bill – presented as an update to the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) of 1978 – proposes an end to NSA bulk collection but contains various mandates for how phone companies would be required to store the data, something privacy advocates argue amounts to a re-creation of the NSA database in private hands.

Critics also point to the absence of reforms aimed at making the court approval process more transparent and accountable, and believe it is unlikely to attract support from reformers such as Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican Mike Lee.

“Senator Wyden has serious concerns with this bill,” one staff aide told the Guardian. “At this point the USA Freedom Act is clearly the most viable path for surveillance reform.”

Losing support from Democrats and Republicans on the civil liberties end of the spectrum while gaining the backing of only a handful of more moderate Republicans may make Feinstein’s bill just as hard, if not harder, to pass than the USA Freedom Act, which at least already has the overwhelming support of the House of Representatives.

Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell has limited room for maneouvre since the existing authorisation for bulk collection – under separate legislation, the Patriot Act – expires on 31 May and has also been ruled illegal by a federal appeals court.

McConnell originally favoured simply renewing the Patriot Act, but even a short-term extension failed to reach the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate last week, receiving support from just 45 senators.

Another Republican bill, proposed by intelligence chairman Richard Burr, was also shot down by reformers in the House who made it clear they saw it as an attempt to bolster, not diminish, NSA surveillance powers.

Instead, McConnell is now believed to be focused on what one Democratic staffer called “face-saving” amendments: small tweaks to the USA Freedom Act, such as a requirement that telephone companies certify they are ready to respond to NSA requests, which would allow the majority leader to show he had changed the House version without losing the support needed to pass it.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama once again urged staff on Capitol Hill to work through the Memorial Day recess to ensure a solution is found before McConnell brings the Senate back to vote again this Sunday.

“[Congress] left town without finishing necessary work on Fisa and some of the reforms that are necessary to the Patriot Act,” said the president.



“I strongly urge the Senate to work through this recess and make sure that they identify a way to get this done ... This needs to get done. And I would urge folks to just work through whatever issues can still exist. Make sure we don’t have on midnight Sunday night this task still undone, because it’s necessary to keep the American people safe and secure.”

Feinstein’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman in New York