Senate meets with key Patriot Act provisions on the ropes

Key Patriot Act anti-terror provisions, including bulk collection of Americans' phone records, expire at midnight unless senators come up with an 11th hour deal in an extraordinary session today.
Chances for that look all but nonexistent. Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who is running for president, vowed yesterday to force the bulk phone collection program to expire and the Senate's complex rules allow him to do just that, at least temporarily.
A House-passed bill backed by the White House that remakes the National Security Agency phone collection program is just three votes short in the Senate.
But even if it picks up the needed support despite opposition from Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, moving to a final vote requires the assent of all senators. Paul made crystal clear yesterday that he will not go along.

"I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program," Paul said in a statement. "Sometimes when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over."
Paul cannot hold off a final vote indefinitely, just for a few days. But until the impasse is resolved, the NSA will lose its legal authority to collect and search domestic phone records for connections to international terrorists the once-secret program revealed by agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Two lesser-known Patriot Act provisions also would expire: one, so far unused, that helps the bureau track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects unconnected to a foreign power, and another that allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continuously discard their cellphones.

The White House is raising dire warnings that letting the authorities expire would put Americans at risk.
"Heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate," President Barack Obama said on Friday.
The White House-backed USA Freedom Act would keep the programs operational but shut down the bulk phone collection program over six months and give phone companies the job of maintaining records the government could search.
Civil libertarians dispute the White House's warnings, arguing that the surveillance programs have never been shown to produce major results.

"A great deal of the 'sturm und drang' over expiration of the Patriot Act is overstated. ... The sky is not going to fall," American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero told reporters.