Patriot Act may be here to stay, Washington source says

The Senate probably will not pass a new bill that would update, and limit, the surveillance powers granted to the National Security Agency by the Patriot Act, a source in the capital told VentureBeat.

The powers granted in the Patriot Act are set to expire June 1.

The House of Representatives earlier this week passed by a wide margin its version of a bill, the USA Freedom Act (.pdf), that would update the Patriot Act. If passed, that bill would prohibit the broad collection of phone records and Internet data by the government.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he would prefer reauthorizing the Patriot Act full stop, allowing the NSA to keep its current surveillance powers.

President Obama has already taken a firm stance on the issue by asking the Senate to approve the House version of the USA Freedom Act.

Obama’s support for the act, ours source said, almost guarantees that Senate leadership will not allow key sections of the Freedom Act to be written into a final bill — especially the parts that pull back surveillance powers granted to the NSA by the Patriot Act.

But the Senate has not moved quickly pass to pass a final bill before June 1. The body now has just a few more days to decide what parts of the USA Freedom Act, if any, should be written into a Senate version of the bill.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest called McConnell’s failure to move the bill forward “grossly irresponsible.”

“The fact is we have people in the U.S. Senate right now who are playing chicken with this,” Earnest said.

House members are now on recess for the rest of the month, so it’s unlikely that members of the House and Senate can work together on a version of the bill that would satisfy both bodies before June 1.

Members of the Senate are also eager to leave for break. So any effort to open discussions to move large parts of the Freedom Act into the Senate Bill, our source said, wouldn’t be looked upon favorably.

Our source believes that the only thing that has a real chance of passage this weekend is an extension of the Patriot Act. An extension could mean a couple of weeks, but it’s procedurally possible for McConnell and company to stretch it into months. This would not only avert the deadline crunch, and might also satisfy a purely political strategy.

A long extension might make it possible to re-open the issue of updating the Patriot Act during election season. If that happened, the whole issue is reframed. Instead of being a personal liberties issue it would become a litmus test for the national defense positions of both Congressional and presidential candidates.

It could make members of the House or Senate who supported weakening the Patriot Act look soft on defense during an election year.