Director
Kate Martin
May 29, 2015
The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Senate Majority Leader
317 Russell Senate Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Harry Reid
Senate Minority Leader
522 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Reid:
We write to urge that the Senate pass the USA Freedom Act, S.1123 when it returns this
Sunday, May 31.
As you know, the USA Freedom Act was passed overwhelmingly in the House by a vote
of 338-88 and has bipartisan support in the Senate. It is supported by civil liberties
groups, including the undersigned Center for National Security Studies. It was negotiated
with the intelligence community, as well as other parts of the Executive Branch and is
supported by the President, the Attorney General, and the Director of National
Intelligence. A wide spectrum of companies, industry and trade groups also support the
bill. We have worked on government surveillance since the mid-1970’s, including all
the times the Congress has considered provisions of the Patriot Act since
2001. Enactment of the USA Freedom Act would represent the first time since then that
the civil liberties community, the intelligence community and industry have agreed on a
package of measures to both protect individual liberties and constitutional government
and protect against national security threats.
While we believe that additional reforms to government surveillance authorities are
necessary to properly protect constitutional rights, the USA Freedom Act would provide
substantial improvements to current law. It would make clear that Congress does not
authorize the mass collection by the NSA of the metadata of all communications by
Americans – whether by telephone or internet - while preserving the government’s
capability to retrieve the metadata of communications by suspected terrorists. It would
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provide additional transparency into the operations of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, a necessary step to assure the American public that Congress is
working to prevent the use of secret law for the secret surveillance of Americans.
We also urge you to oppose the FISA Improvements Act of 2015 and the FISA
Restoration and Reform Act of 2015, which were introduced at the eleventh hour last
week. We note first that the length and the complexity of those bills do not permit
Congress to gain an adequate understanding of their effects or intent without much
greater time for consideration and debate than exists. Without the benefit of debate and
explanation, it nevertheless appears that both bills would fail to end the bulk collection of
Americans’ metadata. To the contrary, the FISA Improvements Act would arguably
endorse bulk collection of the metadata on all Americans’ communications by omitting
any reforms to the pen register/trap and trace provisions in FISA which have been used
for just such collection. Moreover, both bills would weaken if not eliminate altogether
the prohibitions on bulk collection contained in the USA Freedom Act (and endorsed by
the intelligence community) by changing the definition of “specific selection term.” Both
bills also significantly weaken the modest reforms in USA Freedom requiring greater
transparency concerning rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
In sum, we urge you to seize this historic opportunity and pass the USA Freedom Act.
Thank you for consideration of our views.
Sincerely
Center for National Security Studies
For further information, please contact Kate Martin at kmartin@cnss.org or Joe Onek at
jonek@rabengroup.com.
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