Senate to Vote on Starting Over Surveillance Powers

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The Senate is planned to vote to start next week on a bill that passed in the House to renew the surveillance powers of the government. It comes almost two months after vital national-security mechanisms fell away in a division between the House and Senate, POLITICO reported.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that a compromise had been made between Senate leaders to vote as early as Monday on three-plus amendments to the House bill, the result of bipartisan bargaining with the Trump administration. A source close to the developments affirmed the Senate arrangement to POLITICO.

Senators departed from Washington, D.C. in March without refurbishing vital parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, despite the House approving its agreement, in disagreements with the Senate’s most outspoken civil libertarians who said the agreement legislation was not helpful enough in protecting Americans’ privacy rights.

Senators come to an agreement on a relatively brief continuance of the FISA powers in advance of departing from town for five weeks in the middle of COVID-19, but the House didn’t wind up voting on it.