Reid urges Senate to back NSA reform

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged senators on Monday to pass House legislation that would overhaul the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program.

“I would hope that we could move forward on what the House has done,” Reid said in comments on the Senate floor.

{mosads}The House is set to vote this week on the USA Freedom Act, which would end the NSA’s bulk collection of phone “metadata” and require the agency to ask private companies for a narrow set of phone records.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate Republicans oppose the House bill and are pushing for a clean extension of the existing Patriot Act law, which expires on June 1.

Reid said that he hopes McConnell “will reassess his priorities and instead choose to protect Americans’ civil liberties.”

Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed a victory to opponents of the NSA program. It declared that the Patriot Act’s Section 215 did not authorize the NSA to engage in sweeping collection of Americans’ phone records, effectively finding the program to be illegal.

Reid said that the court’s ruling underscores that the law must be reformed.

“It must be extended and reformed,” he said. “It would be irresponsible to merely reauthorize and not reform. How can you reauthorize something that’s illegal? You can’t. You shouldn’t.”