With Surveillance Program Set to Expire, Senate Turns Toward Limits

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

WASHINGTON — The government’s authority to sweep up vast quantities of phone records in the hunt for terrorists was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Monday after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, blocked an extension of the program during an extraordinary and at times caustic Sunday session of the Senate.

Still, the Senate signaled that it was ready to curtail the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection program with likely passage this week of legislation that would shift the storage of telephone records from the government to the phone companies. The House overwhelmingly passed that bill last month. Senators voted, 77 to 17, on Sunday to take up the House bill.

Mr. Paul’s stand may have forced the temporary expiration of parts of the post-9/11 Patriot Act used by the National Security Agency to collect phone records, but he was helped by the miscalculation of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who sent the Senate on a weeklong vacation after blocking the House bill before Memorial Day.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/politics/senate-nsa-surveillance-usa-freedom-act.html

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The roll call. The nays:

NAYs ---17
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Coats (R-IN)
Collins (R-ME)
Cotton (R-AR)
Crapo (R-ID)
Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Grassley (R-IA)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)

[Downwinder]

1. They can't tell how many Law Enforcement has shot, but

they know who I called.

[GGJohn]

2. Rarely do I say this,

but kudos to those republicans who had the balls to block this unconstitutional POS law, but what I want to know is, Where the Fuck were the Democrats? Why the hell would they not vote to block this?

[Sgent]

3. Your reading it wrong

Most of those R's voted the way they did because that want to reauthorize the full Patriot act and think the house bill is too watered down.

[d_legendary1]

4. Doesn't matter what the reason. They voted against it

as everyone else should have as well. We need to start putting some of the gubbermint voyeurs in jail so they can quit spying on people.