Wyden, Paul, Amash and Lofgren Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Permanently End Mass NSA Surveillance of Phone Records

Statement

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., today introduced the Ending Mass Collection of Americans' Phone Records Act in the Senate and House to permanently end the National Security Agency's scandal-plagued program to surveil Americans' phone records.

"The NSA's sprawling phone records dragnet was born in secrecy, defended with lies and never stopped a single terrorist attack. Even after Congress acted in 2015, the program collected over half a billion phone records in a single year. It's time, finally, to put a stake in the heart of this unnecessary government surveillance program and start to restore some of Americans' liberties," Wyden said. "This bill is just the opening bid in a much-needed, broad overhaul of Section 215 of the Patriot Act."

"The federal government's appalling violations of our Fourth Amendment rights must end. This bill permanently stops one of the sprawling surveillance state's most intrusive overreaches and is the first step in a movement to reclaim the constitutional liberties sacrificed by the overreaching provisions of the PATRIOT Act," said Sen. Paul.

"After falsely insisting to Congress that this illegal surveillance program is carefully overseen and critical to national security, the government admitted last year that it had to delete years of records due to legal violations, and now it's been reported that the program has actually been shuttered for six months," said Amash. "Getting rid of this program will vindicate Americans' rights and begin the process of making the broader PATRIOT Act reforms that are going to be necessary to address the law's serious constitutional flaws."

"There are more substantial reforms that Congress can make to the Patriot Act authorities expiring this year to protect Americans' Constitutional rights," Lofgren said. "We must also ensure that the 2015 reforms of THE USA FREEDOM Act are working as intended. However, this bill takes a first uncontroversial step by abolishing a program which has consistently had issues complying with the Constitution, is of questionable intelligence value, and--if news reports are to be believed--was discontinued by the NSA over 6 months ago.

Wyden, Paul, Amash and Lofgren have led bipartisan opposition to unconstitutional mass surveillance of Americans, repeatedly partnering on initiatives to defend Americans' liberty from overreaching government interference. Wyden and Paul requested an inspector general investigation of the NSA phone records program after the agency revealed last year it had collected millions of unauthorized records.

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