Corker calls NSA surveillance program shockingly small

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said Wednesday he was shocked to learn this week how little data the National Security Agency is actually amassing in its controversial collection of Americans' phone records.

"It's almost malpractice," Corker said at a breakfast for reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "That's the best word I can use to describe the amount of data that is being collected."

Corker, who said the NSA's data collection needs to be "ramped up hugely", was reacting to a closed-door briefing that national security officials held Tuesday to brief senators on federal surveillance programs. That briefing was organized by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is seeking to renew the NSA's surveillance program without changes. Participants included FBI Director James Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency.

"I think there was an aha moment (Tuesday) for people on both sides of the aisle when we realized how little data is being collected," said Corker, R-Tenn. "It's beyond belief how little data is part of this program, especially if the goal is to uncover terrorists."

He called the revelations "a potential game changer" in the debate over the future of the NSA program and predicted that it may result in a short-term extension of the program while senators debate what to do next. The phone data collection program has been conducted under Section 215 of the sweeping Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. That section and other provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire on June 1 unless Congress acts.

The House on Wednesday is poised to pass the USA Freedom Act, which would amend the Patriot Act to bar the NSA from collecting phone records on millions of Americans not suspected of any terrorist activity. The NSA has been using Section 215 to collect the metadata, which includes information about what phone numbers Americans call, when those calls are made, and how long the calls last. The data does not include the actual substance of the calls.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a supporter of the USA Freedom Act, said Corker is missing the point.

"The overriding challenge for the intelligence community in a world awash in electronic data is not the amount of collection, it's about acquiring only the data you need and being able to make sense of it," Schiff said. "We don't need to just collect ever increasing amounts of data, we need to be smart and judicious. We need to have lawful, privacy-protecting tools to collect the right data and then to have the tools to decipher it efficiently and effectively."

Corker is siding with McConnell, who opposes any changes to the NSA surveillance program. McConnell opposes the USA Freedom Act and has introduced a bill that would renew the Patriot Act exactly as it is through 2020.

President Obama this week announced his support for the USA Freedom Act, which administration officials said would help restore Americans' trust in the federal government's national security programs.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are continuing to press McConnell for a vote on the USA Freedom Act, which they introduced in the Senate.

The NSA program was revealed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, prompting lawmakers on both the right and left to try to rein in what some critics have called a "surveillance state." Just this month, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA's mass phone data collection program is illegal and goes beyond what Congress intended when it passed the Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the USA.

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