Hey guys, wouldn’t it be great if the NSA was granted permission to collect data on us en masse for another five years?! No? Well then you’ll probably want to voice your concerns here soon, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has introduced a new bill that would extend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which enables the government to collect tons of data on us and is supposed to expire on June, until 2020.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night to extend through 2020 a controversial surveillance authority under the Patriot Act. The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government’s spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the hunt for clues of terrorist activity. That NSA program was revealed publicly almost two years ago by a former agency contractor, Edward Snowden. The disclosure touched off a global debate over the proper scope of surveillance by U.S. spy agencies and led President Obama to call for an end to the NSA’s collection of the records.