NSA prepares to shut down wiretapping program

The NSA is preparing for the Patriot Act to expire next Monday. Unless that law is extended at the last minute, the Secret Service must stop collecting American phone records.

The Patriot Act must be renewed every year by the US parliament, and although that was just a formality for years, it is questionable whether that will happen this year. There is a lot of resistance in the House of Representatives to the power of the NSA to store and search metadata about the telephone use of all Americans. Incidentally, not the metadata of all Americans is stored, because data is not collected from all providers; it concerns about a third of all Americans.

Last weekend, the Senate voted against extending the program. The Senate will meet again next Sunday to meet again at the last minute, but it is unlikely that the law will be extended.

The NSA is therefore preparing to shut down the controversial program, the Los Angeles Times writes. The FBI’s powers in the ‘fight against terrorism’, such as the power to request interception warrants for multiple telephone lines at once, will also expire if the law is not extended.

Last weekend, the US Senate voted against a bill that would have curbed the NSA’s metadata program. In that proposal, telecom providers would have to collect metadata about telephone use themselves, after which the NSA could request that data. This situation is comparable to the European retention obligation, which has been brushed aside by the judge.