Congress is presently debating whether and to what extent to re-authorize bulk collection of telephone records, a key provision set forth in Section 215 of the Patriot Act. My friend Rachel Brand, a former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy, writes an informative piece about it in the Christian Science Monitor. She notes, among other things:
[T]he question before Congress is not whether to reauthorize or prohibit the bulk telephone records program that has garnered so much attention. It is whether to reauthorize Section 215 itself. This authority was enacted after 9/11 to remedy the problem that officers conducting foreign intelligence investigations of international terrorism and espionage did not have a basic investigative tool available even in ordinary criminal investigations. The telephone records program conducted by the NSA is only one application of that authority. If Congress allows Section 215 to expire, it will not just eliminate that program; it will do away entirely with an essential investigative tool.
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