Bipartisan support growing against domestic spying

Good. Now let's hope this is more than just rhetoric. [Link]

During a sometimes contentious hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats told administration officials that they believed the government had exceeded the surveillance authorities granted by Congress, and warned that they were unlikely to be reauthorized in the future.

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, said that no one in Congress believed that the counterterrorism laws enacted since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were meant to allow for the collection of phone records of virtually everyone in America.

“The government is stockpiling sensitive personal data on a grand scale,” said Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida. “Intelligence officers, contractors and personnel only need a rubber-stamp warrant from the FISA court to then learn virtually everything there is to know about an American citizen,” he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

While administration officials defended the surveillance during the hearing, several lawmakers said that the data collection was unsustainable, and that Congress would move to either revoke the legislative authorization for the bulk collection now or at least refuse to renew it when it expires in 2015. Mr. Sensenbrenner interrupted James Cole, a deputy attorney general, to say, “Unless you realize you’ve got a problem, that is not going to be renewed.”

Wednesday’s hearing was part of a counteroffensive emerging against the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance since the scope of the spying operations was exposed by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.

A coalition of Silicon Valley companies and civil liberties groups plans to press President Obama on Thursday to disclose more information about the agency’s surveillance operations so that Americans can have a more informed public debate. Much of the controversy involves the agency’s bulk collection of telephone data, which includes which numbers have called other numbers and time and length of calls, but not the content.

 In a letter to top administration officials, the group will ask that the government start opening up the surveillance process by allowing companies to publicly disclose the number of secret requests for data they receive from the N.S.A., the number of individuals the requests cover, and whether the requests involve the content of communications or other data, according to a draft of the letter and interviews with officials from the companies and organizations involved.

 The group, which includes Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter, and organizations including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundationand the American Civil Liberties Union, urge in their letter that the government publish the same information, and that Congress should enact new legislation mandating greater openness in the surveillance process. 

  The letter does not demand an end to the domestic surveillance. But it is still significant because it allies the corporations that are directly involved with the government’s surveillance collection with some of the most vocal critics of the administration’s efforts to keep the N.S.A. domestic spying program in the shadows.  Microsoft sent a similar letter on its own to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

The coalition letter also comes as momentum is building in Congress to require greater public disclosure on the programs. “I am beginning to see a lot of Republicans fight on this issue,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. “I think the situation is extremely fluid, but I know a lot of people are interested in doing something.”

Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, said in an interview that he planned to introduce legislation mandating public disclosure along the same lines as the recommendations in the coalition’s letter, while Representative Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat, said in an interview that he was planning to introduce similar legislation in the House on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sensenbrenner and Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who is the ranking minority member on the judiciary panel, sent a letter to Mr. Holder and James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, also asking that the companies be allowed to disclose more information publicly about government demands for data.