Washington - US House members bolted from Washington for the rest of the month Thursday without Congress finalizing how to prevent a lapse in the intelligence community's use of crucial anti-terrorism tools.
A temporary freeze of national security provisions that expire June 1 grew increasingly likely, as members of the Senate struggled to find support for a landmark reform bill that would end the National Security Agency's controversial bulk data collection.
The USA Patriot Act had broad support following the September 11, 2001 attacks, but many lawmakers now believe that the scooping up of telephone data from millions of Americans allowed under the law's Section 215 represents unconstitutional government surveillance.
The sections codifying that dragnet collection, and provisions authorizing roving wiretaps and lone-wolf tracking will expire on the first day of next month.
Early this month, the House of Representatives passed the Freedom Act, which ends bulk data collection while preserving essential national security authorities.
That bill passed overwhelmingly, but it faces a tough Senate test vote Friday or Saturday, with several lawmakers, including Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr, predicting it would fail.
"We're not there yet, (but) there's a path," insisted conservative Senator Mike Lee, who backs the reform bill.
Complicating matters, a two-month Patriot Act extension proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is also proving unpopular.
With the clock ticking, the Senate faced the prospect of passing an emergency extension.
"Nobody wants us to go dark on our ability to detect terrorist activity, so I imagine there will be some very urgent discussions and we'll work something out," number two Senate Republican John Cornyn told reporters.
But senators were scrambling for a solution.
"Nobody knows what the path forward is on this," a senior Democratic aide told AFP.
AFP
