An annual intelligence policy bill is being held up in the Senate over a provision it contains that would allow the government to monitor more online interactions without a warrant.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) placed a hold on the intelligence authorization bill Monday evening, preventing the upper chamber from passing the legislation by unanimous consent. He suggested that Senators were exploiting the mass shooting in Orlando earlier this month to jam through an expansion of surveillance powers.
“The American people want policies that protect their security and their liberty,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “After a tragedy, and you can almost set your clock by it, increasingly proposals are being brought up that really don’t much of either.”
In an interview with the Huffington Post earlier this week, Wyden suggested that most of the Senate doesn’t understand the controversial provision that was tucked into the authorization bill.
The measure would allow the FBI to use a specialized subpoena known as a National Security Letter (NSL) to obtain Americans’ online metadata like browsing history, email records, online billing information, and IP addresses. Recipients of NSLs are often gagged from disclosing the existence of the order.
“A conservative came up to me and said, ‘Do you think people know that under this [bill], without any court approval the government can get people’s browsing history?’” Wyden told HuffPo. “I said, ‘I don’t think most of the Senate knows that.’”
Last week, the Senate narrowly rejected an amendment to a Justice Department spending bill that would have similarly expanded the reach of National Security Letters.
The measure was defeated by two votes, falling just short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) switching from “yea” to “nay” in order to take advantage of Senate rules that allow him to bring the amendment back to the floor for consideration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers who likely would have supported the amendment were absent for the vote.
In order to break Wyden’s hold, McConnell would again need to find 60 votes–to support a motion to invoke cloture on the legislation.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has also been angling to attach the NSL rider to an email privacy bill currently being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In his floor speech on Monday, Wyden also took exception with a provision in the intel bill that would limit the power of the executive agency’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The body was created to balance privacy needs against counter-terror policies.
