[Infowarrior] - HPSCI surveillance 'reform' bill has controversial legislative path

[Richard Forno]

NSA critics express 'deep concern' over route change for House reform bill

Bill will go through intelligence committee rather than judiciary committee, in a move described by insiders as 'highly unusual'

		• Spencer Ackerman in Washington
		• theguardian.com, Wednesday 26 March 2014 17.22 EDT

Congressional critics of the bulk collection of telephone records by the National Security Agency fear that its allies are circumventing them in the House of Representatives.

The House parliamentarian, who oversees procedural matters, has determined that a new bill that substantially modifies the seminal 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will go through the intelligence committee rather than the judiciary committee, a move that two congressional aides consider “highly unusual.”

Seemingly an arcane parliamentary issue, the jurisdiction question reveals a subterranean and intense fight within the House about the future course of US surveillance in the post-Edward Snowden era. The fight does not align with partisan divides, with both sides claiming both Republican and Democratic support.

The bill, authored by Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, would largely get the NSA out of the business of collecting US phone data in bulk. Rogers and Ruppersberger, both staunch advocates of the NSA and until now just as staunch defenders of bulk collection, are the leaders of the intelligence committee.

Yet the House judiciary committee thought it was the natural choice for primary legislative jurisdiction over the Fisa Transparency and Modernization Act, introduced on Tuesday. While the intelligence committee oversees US spy activities, the judiciary committee has oversight responsibilities over surveillance law.

The judiciary committee is also a stronghold of support for a rival bill, the USA Freedom Act, two of whose principal sponsors are its top Democrat and a former GOP chairman. The Freedom Act also ends NSA bulk collection, but includes more civil libertarian provisions, such as the prior approval of a judge to force phone companies to turn over customer data and a threshold requirement of relevance to an ongoing investigation to secure such approval.

Ruppersberger, in a press conference on Tuesday, blasted the USA Freedom Act, saying it would make Americans “less safe.”

But the USA Freedom Act, despite also being centrally concerned with intelligence policy, was given primarily to the judiciary committee, raising an expectation on the committee that the same would hold for Rogers and Ruppersberger’s bill despite the committee affiliations of its sponsors.

A congressional aide who would only speak on condition of anonymity said it was “new and different that a bill that amends Fisa wouldn’t come to us first." The House parliamentarian, Thomas Wickham, declined to comment.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/nsa-critics-house-reform-bill-switch