• Judiciary committee chair gives new life to USA Freedom Act • Bill to overhaul spy agency had been stalled by months of delay

The chairman of a key committee in the House of Representatives agreed to move on a major surveillance overhaul on Monday, after months of delay.



The decision, by the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, breathes new life back into the USA Freedom Act, a legislative fix favoured by privacy advocates to prevent the US government from collecting domestic data in bulk.



The judiciary committee is expected to take action on an amendment encapsulating the provisions of the USA Freedom Act on Wednesday at 1pm. Congressional aides expected it to pass the committee with bipartisan support, setting up a fight on the House floor.



Goodlatte, who had been hesitant to endorse the bill, written by former committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, will now vote for it personally.



Goodlatte’s decision comes despite pressure by the House Republican leadership, which preferred an alternative bill, written by the House intelligence committee leadership, that would permit the government to acquire Americans’ data without a specific prior judicial order for it. Additional pressure came from a desire on all sides to avoid surveillance-related amendments to unrelated, critical bills slated for floor consideration later this month.



An attempt by the intelligence committee and the House leadership to circumvent Goodlatte’s committee and pass the rival bill is said by observers to have galvanised Goodlatte’s decision to move forward on the USA Freedom Act. Internal committee negotiations on modifying the USA Freedom Act for passage intensified after the House intelligence committee unveiled its bill in March.



The Obama administration has yet to take a public position on the House judiciary bill or the House intelligence bill, although President Barack Obama endorsed getting the National Security Agency out of the business of bulk domestic phone records collection in March.



“This will start to look like a reasonable path forward for surveillance reform,” said a congressional aide.



Barely an hour after the judiciary committee announced its move on the USA Freedom Act, the House intelligence committee announced that it will mark up its alternative bill, the Fisa Transparency and Modernization Act, on Thursday.

"This bill directly addresses the privacy concerns many Americans have expressed over bulk collection. The bill ends bulk collection of telephone metadata and increases transparency while maintaining the tools our government needs to keep Americans and our allies safe. We believe this bill responds to the concerns many members of Congress have expressed and can be the compromise vehicle to reform Fisa while preserving important counterterrorism capabilities," said the intelligence committee leaders, Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, in a joint statement on Monday.

Rogers and Ruppersberger, the NSA's staunchest advocates in the House, have criticized the USA Freedom Act for scaling back bulk collection too far to safeguard national security. Their countermove now sets up a race to see which bill House speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, will bring to the floor first.

Civil libertarians on the judiciary committee had to compromise in order to gain support for the act. Significantly, the government will still be able to collect phone data on Americans, pending a judge’s individualized order based on “reasonable articulable suspicion” – a standard preferred by the NSA – of wrongdoing, and can collect call records two degrees or “hops” of separation from the individual suspected.

The compromised version of the bill tightens a prohibition banning the NSA from targeting Americans in its vast communications content dragnets, but softens its earlier outright ban on querying those dragnets for Americans' information, a practice termed the "backdoor search" by senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat.

The bill commands the most formal congressional support of any alternative, with 143 House cosponsors and another 21 for a companion bill in the Senate authored by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Privacy advocates and civil libertarians have long believed they would have the votes to pass the USA Freedom Act if only they could get it out of the judiciary committee and onto the floor.

Wednesday's version of the USA Freedom Act will be brought before the committee by Sensenbrenner, Goodlatte and their fellow Republican, Randy Forbes of Virginia. Joining them will be ranking Democrat John Conyers of Michigan and Democrats Jerrold Nadler of New York and Bobby Scott of Virginia.

In a statement, the six congressmen praised the compromise.

"As the Committee of primary jurisdiction, we have conducted robust oversight of the intelligence-gathering programs operated under Fisa and have come to the conclusion that these programs are in need of reform to protect our privacy, including prohibiting bulk collection under Section 215. Over the past several months, we have worked together across party lines and with the Administration and have reached a bipartisan solution that includes real protections for Americans’ civil liberties, robust oversight, and additional transparency, while preserving our ability to protect America’s national security. We look forward to taking up this legislation on Wednesday and continuing to work with House leaders to reform these programs," they said jointly.

But some civil libertarians and USA Freedom Act advocates are expressing concern about the compromises the Judiciary committee made to clear the decks for Wednesday's vote.

"I will carefully review Judiciary Committee-revised version of #FreedomAct," tweeted Representative Justin Amash, who last week intimated he would restrict bulk collection through adding amendments to other bills should the Freedom Act be stifled. "Just a weakened bill or worse than status quo? I'll find out."