Will The Senate Allow The Patriot Act To Simply Expire?

Posted on May 27, 2015

Judgment day approaches for Section 215 of the Patriot Act and the US government’s current mass surveillance program.

Last Saturday morning, the Senate refused to extend the draconian piece of legislation and couldn’t summon the necessary majority to impose a compromise that would have limited the scope of government surveillance but retained Section 215 through 2019.

Now they’ll meet once more on Sunday, in the dying hours of the Patriot Act’s authority.

Shahid Buttar writes for Truthout:

“…The expiration of Patriot Act Section 215 advances Fourth Amendment privacy interests. Even though mass surveillance will continue for now under other legal authorities, one program through which our government monitors phone calls and tracks everyone’s behavior, regardless of wrongdoing, will end.

More broadly, [Saturday’s] vote begins a long-overdue process of limiting executive powers, expanded during a period of seeming emergency, which grew entrenched despite proving ineffective as well as constitutionally offensive.”

Barring a Hail Mary pass from the NSA and its congressional stooges in the coming days, we may be enjoying the final throes of unfiltered government surveillance this week!

Read Buttar’s analysis in full here.

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