PRISM: NSA Surveillance Prompts Several Bills But Little Action In US Congress - by Sabrina Siddiqui

In the three weeks since Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance programs, the legislative response to his revelations on Capitol Hill has slowed to a glacial pace and public obsession has noticeably shifted from a debate on national security versus privacy to Snowden's latest whereabouts.

Civil liberties advocates in Congress introduced a slew of bills in response to reports that the NSA has been collecting phone records from millions of Americans and mining electronic communications from nine major Internet companies:

• Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) proposed legislation would require the federal government to have a warrant based on probable cause in order to seize phone records from Americans;
• Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who long warned of the government's surveillance methods, are seeking to limit the government's authority to collect data;
• Unusual bedfellows Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) co-sponsored a bill that would declassify FISA court opinions;
• And this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation to revisit the Patriot Act Section 215 and FISA Amendment Act Section 702, under which the NSA programs are lawful.

But the one thing they lack is a timeline for when, or if, anything will actually get done. While the need to address the scope of the NSA programs has been raised in Judiciary committee hearings held by Leahy, none of the bills aimed at doing that has progressed beyond picking up a few cosponsors.

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