Jim Sensenbrenner among those concerned by proposals on the table and says stance to end bulk surveillance is ‘unwavering’

Advocates for the curtailment of bulk surveillance are pre-emptively opposing a reform proposal presented to the White House under which responsibility for the National Security Agency’s vast database of US phone records would be handed over to the FBI.

That proposal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is one of several options under internal consideration for revamping the NSA’s mass collection of phone data, all of which are fiercely contested for varying reasons by spies, privacy groups, phone companies and legislators.

Privacy advocates took the four ideas that have been presented to the White House as an indication of how strongly the NSA and its allies are fighting to preserve their powers in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about surveillance.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican who authored the USA Freedom Act, a bill to end bulk domestic surveillance, said he was “unwavering” in his stance after hearing of the new options the administration is considering.

“While I am willing to sit down with President Obama and my colleagues in Congress to negotiate certain aspects of the bill, my stance to end bulk collection of innocent Americans’ data is unwavering,” Sensenbrenner told the Guardian on Wednesday.

“Bulk collection has never been authorized by Congress and I intend to stop this blatant abuse of the law.”

Senator Ron Wyden, another critic of bulk surveillance, told the Guardian: “Ending ineffective collection that violates constitutional protections, adds little or no unique value, and could be replaced by less intrusive methods makes more sense than trying to continue it.”

Other options, familiar from Obama’s January 17 speech on surveillance, are to give the phone data to a private entity such as the telephone companies, or to an as-yet-undefined non-governmental custodian.

The administration is additionally considering whether to require an expanded mandate for the companies to retain customer data beyond the point at which they now purge it.

“The president was very clear. He did not want the government in the business of this bulk collection, so shifting this to the FBI is not an answer,” said Michelle Richardson, a surveillance lobbyist for the ACLU.

A final option under consideration, advocated by civil libertarians since the publication of reporting based on material provided by Snowden began, would be to end the bulk collection entirely, leaving the NSA to acquire phone data through a warrant based on individualized suspicion of connections to terrorism or espionage.

White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to discuss the specifics of the proposals. Obama is due to make a decision by March 28, when the current legal mandate for bulk phone records collection issued by the secret Fisa court expires.

“Since the speech, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community have been at work developing options consistent with the president’s direction,” Hayden said.

“They have kept us abreast of their progress, and we look forward to reviewing those options. Moreover, as the president noted in his remarks, we will also consult with Congress to seek their views on this issue, and then seek congressional authorization, as needed.”

Privacy advocates consider the post-NSA surveillance choices under consideration weighted toward the status quo – or, in the case of giving the data to the FBI, a step backward.

“The FBI’s history of abusing the civil liberties of Americans is longer even than the NSA’s,” said Shahid Buttar, the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, which is supporting state and federal legislative efforts to restrain the NSA.

“The US Congress found wide-ranging problems spanning several decades the last time anyone even looked very closely at the FBI, which is long overdue for a thorough investigation of the sort of the Church Committee performed in the 70s.”

On Capitol Hill, battle lines over surveillance became starker this week, with Congressman Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who chairs the intelligence committee, opposing a shift in the bulk collection away from the NSA. The main congressional alternative, Sensenbrenner’s USA Freedom Act, seeks to end the bulk collection in favor of requiring the government to obtain legal orders for data tied to specific suspicions of wrongdoing.

During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the nominee to run the Justice Department’s National Security Division, John Carlin, recalled cases in which phone companies “have been able to respond very, very quickly to the FBI” in a manner that aided national security investigations.

Wyden, whose question prompted Carlin’s response, argued Wednesday that such fleetness indicated that bulk collection could be safely ended, rather than restructured.

“Government agencies can already get the information they need to protect the country using individual records requests. Phone companies are capable of responding to those requests very quickly in emergencies and already store their customers’ records for a fairly long time. I see no need to require companies to do anything they aren’t already doing,” Wyden said.

Richardson said the current internal wrangling reflected a pattern of US spy agencies attempting to turn public outrage to their advantage.

“This is standard operating procedure for the intel community. When you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, why not ask for a glass of milk, too?” she said.

Also on Wednesday, the Justice Department formally requested that the Fisa court permit the government to hold domestic phone data beyond the five-year point at which the NSA is supposed to purge it.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration claims it needs to hold the data longer in order to respond to the lawsuits that are challenging the legality of the bulk collection of that data.