The good, bad, and the ugly of pending congressional surveillance bills

[Commentary] On June 1 the legal authority enabling the National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata collection program expires. The expiration date of Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act comes two years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the spying to the Guardian. Ahead of the deadline, three key bills have emerged. They can best be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly. One proposal scuttles the bulk metadata program altogether. Another bill tinkers with the snooping. Yet another allows it to continue unabated though 2020.

The good: There's a House measure called the Surveillance State Repeal Act that does what its name says. It ends the authority for the bulk telephone metadata collection spying.

The bad: Credo Mobile, Demand Progress, and others immediately blasted the latest version of the USA Freedom Act of 2015, which was proposed April 28 in the House and Senate. They decried it as a "diversion." Instead of the NSA collecting and housing the metadata from every phone call made to and from the United States, the USA Freedom Act's passage would mean that the same data would remain with phone companies. The act requires the NSA to seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before demanding that the telecoms hand over metadata based on an NSA search query.

The ugly: A bill, which is unnamed, leaves the metadata snooping program unscathed through the end of 2020. The measure was proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC). It keeps intact the Patriot Act's "business records" language allowing the authorities to acquire, without a probable cause warrant, "business records" on people held by most any institution, including banks and telephone companies.