Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate majority leader, urged lawmakers Thursday to renew the expiring section of the Patriot Act that the National Security Agency says authorizes the bulk telephone metadata spying program. That's the same section that the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled hours earlier didn't justify the NSA's phone spying program.

"They’re not running rogue out there," McConnell said Thursday on the Senate floor. "The NSA is overseen by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government."

The Kentucky lawmaker has introduced legislation reauthorizing, until 2020, the section of the Patriot Act that the court had ruled upon. A competing measure, known as the USA Freedom Act, would take the bulk data out of the NSA's hands and leave it with the telecoms. It would allow agents to query it, without a probable cause warrant, on an as-needed basis to combat terrorism.

The dispute is taking on a whirlwind sense of urgency because Section 215 of the Patriot Act is expiring June 1.

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Privacy groups are backing the USA Freedom Act because it's the lesser of two evils. There's no way Congress is going to let the program die. So any change to it, however small, is seen as a victory while underscoring how entrenched the surveillance state has become.

"Anything we can do to limit the bastards, let's do it," John Whitehead, who heads the liberal Rutherford Institute and who wrote "A Government of Wolves: The Emergency American Police State," told Ars in a telephone interview.

Dozens of companies, trade groups and civil rights groups are pushing for the USA Freedom Act as well, despite it not being "as comprehensive or protective of civil liberties as we would prefer." (PDF)

McConnell said the USA Freedom Act would leave the US exposed to terror while not protecting privacy.

"Despite the value of the Section 215 program and the rigorous safeguards that govern it, critics of the program either want to do away with it or make it much more difficult to use," he said. "Many of them are proposing a bill, the USA Freedom Act, they say will keep us safe while protecting our privacy. It will do neither. It will neither keep us safe, nor protect our privacy. It will make us more vulnerable and it risks compromising our privacy. The USA Freedom Act would replace Section 215 with an untested, untried and more cumbersome system."

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GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sided with McConnell and said that something awful will happen to the United States without the telephone metadata program.

"One day—I hope that I’m wrong—but one day there will be an attack that's successful," Rubio said. "And the first question out of everyone's mouth is going to be why didn't we know about it. And the answer better not be because this Congress failed to authorize a program that might have helped us know about it."

The metadata at issue concerns the phone numbers of both parties in a call, calling card numbers, the length and time of the calls, and the international mobile subscriber identity (ISMI) number for mobile callers. The NSA keeps a running database of that information and says it runs queries solely to defend against terrorism.

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