NSA Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires

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A little-known provision of the Patriot Act, overlooked by lawmakers and administration officials alike, appears to give President Obama a possible way to keep the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records program going indefinitely -- even if Congress allows the law on which it is based to expire in 2015.

The debate about what may happen next has played out based on a widely held premise: that the legal basis for the program, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, will expire on June 1, so if Congress remains gridlocked, the program will automatically shut down. But that premise may be incorrect. If the summer arrives and the program is facing a shutdown, President Obama could invoke the provision to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to keep it going. Several executive branch officials said the Administration had not been studying that option and expressed doubt that President Obama would take such a step, or that the Surveillance Court would agree to it if he tried. Still, the mere existence of a potential way for the program to keep going without congressional action could recast the debate. Among other things, it could dampen any sense of solace felt by privacy advocates who supported the bill, the USA Freedom Act, and its revisions of the bulk data program, but who believed that if Congress remained gridlocked, the program was certain to disappear. And it potentially transforms the politics of what could happen if the expiration date is reached without new legislation, giving congressional Republicans a way to try to shift the blame for any risk created by letting the program lapse to President Obama, if the president does not use the provision to try to keep it going.


NSA Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires