House effort would completely dismantle Patriot Act

A pair of House lawmakers wants to completely repeal the Patriot Act and other legal provisions to dramatically rein in American spying. Reps Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) unveiled their Surveillance State Repeal Act, which would overhaul American spying powers unlike any other effort to reform the National Security Agency. “This isn’t just tinkering around the edges,” Rep Pocan said. “This is a meaningful overhaul of the system, getting rid of essentially all parameters of the Patriot Act.”

The bill would completely repeal the Patriot Act, the sweeping national security law passed in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, another spying law that the NSA has used to justify collecting vast swaths of people's communications through the Internet. It would also reform the secretive court that oversees the nation’s spying powers, prevent the government from forcing tech companies to create “backdoors” into their devices and create additional protections for whistleblowers.