An across-the-aisle opportunity missed

Last month, the House of Representatives passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill I pushed for and co-sponsored.

In its original form, the bill reined in the domestic spying apparatus established by the National Security Agency. Unfortunately, the legislation that passed was watered down in committee, gutted in opaque back-room negotiations and rushed through the House with little debate.

This bill deserves the name “USA Freedom” as much as the Patriot Act deserves its title. This is a cosmetic bill that codifies the surveillance practices that many have criticized. It was rammed through Congress to defuse criticism of government overreach, not substantively protect our privacy rights and individual liberties.

Progressives and libertarians united to draft the original form of this bill. In a rare showing of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats formed a broad coalition to protect Americans’ civil liberties while balancing our national security interests. I joined with more than 152 fellow members in co-sponsoring the USA Freedom Act.

The bill was originally designed to increase privacy protections for Americans by subjecting the NSA to serious reform and scrutiny. In particular, it aimed to end the bulk data collection authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, establish clear constitutional standards for obtaining a warrant for information, and tighten existing legal language to prevent an abuse of power.

But the version of the USA Freedom Act that came before the House was altered. That’s why civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Open Technology Institute have withdrawn their support. Companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple also pulled their support.

The altered bill requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the body charged with overseeing requests for surveillance warrants, to consider declassifying some of its rulings. But it allows those opinions to be released in redacted form. The bill also authorizes the court to appoint lawyers to argue in favor of privacy rights, but it is not required.

Therefore, my colleagues and I were forced to withdraw our support as the new bill failed to achieve any significant reforms to the NSA’s sweeping and pervasive surveillance systems.

Congress failed to seize on a moment for true across-the-aisle reform. We had the opportunity to reject the false adage that we must choose between liberty and security.

The types of oversight that exist now are insufficient. A secret court is not an adequate check on the government’s powerful spying capabilities, and it has failed as an oversight mechanism. The FISA court has essentially served as a rubber stamp for the NSA’s spying networks, rejecting only a handful of data requests out of tens of thousands that were submitted.

We know millions of phone records have been collected. We don’t know how these phone calls are related to any risk to our security. And while I am glad that the president has recognized that it’s time to reform the NSA, this is not the right way. He has been too eager to defend its practices. It’s incumbent that he listens to the American people and call on Congress to work with him on real, true reforms.

We need to do everything we can to protect our civil liberties, which are the bedrock of our democracy, and fundamental to what it means to be American.

Rep. Steven Horsford, a Democrat, represents Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.