5.25pm GMT

We’re going to end our Capitol Hill live blog coverage for the morning. Here’s a summary of where things stand:

• Members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board told Congress that bulk phone records collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act should end. The board also recommended that a public advocate be added to the Fisa court.

• The board was split over whether Section 215 surveillance is legal. One member of the board felt that the panel should never have touched the question. Board member James Dempsey said that nobody had looked more closely at the legal foundation of 215 spying.

• The board was split on how surveillance programs should be made more transparent. Dempsey said transparency in the law was more important that operational transparency: “The better way... I think.. is to have a statute that clearly authorizes bulk collection, or doesn’t authorize bulk collection.”

• Dempsey said Internet companies would likely not be as willing to support greater transparency in government surveillance as would telephone companies. “I think there may be a split between what the telephone companies want to do, and what the Internet companies would want to do,” he said.

• Senator Richard Blumenthal questioned the efficacy of Section 215 surveillance because it only nets about 30% of domestic US phone records, he said: “Doesn’t this disclosure, that only 30% of these records were actually collected, because of the explosion in cell phone use... raise questions not only about the efficacy of the program but also about the legal foundation?”

• Next up for the board: A review is under way of Section 702 surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act, which applies to international communications. One board member said the 702 program had been useful where the 215 program has not been.

• Board members said they became aware of Section 215 surveillance only shortly before the Snowden revelations.

• Blumenthal said intelligence agents apply a logarithm to a phone database to search it. Board member Judge Patricia Wald said agents use RAS searches – for Reasonable Articulable Suspicion – to look at one number, but then “you get a wider and wider swath” when you take three hops from the first number.

• Two board members who dissented with the finding that Section 215 collection is illegal described their views. One said a finding on legality was outside the board’s purview and “has a very demoralizing and negative effect on the intelligence community... you don’t want them to be timid or scared about the rug being pulled out from under them.”