Our view of this program is shaped by our experience with the NSAâs bulk e-mail records collection program. Concerned about this programâs impact on Americansâ civil liberties and privacy rights, we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of its usefulness. They were not able to do so, and it was shut down that year. This experience demonstrated to us that intelligence agenciesâ assessments of the effectiveness of particular collection programs are not always accurate, and it led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of collecting bulk phone records.  The federal governmentâs collection of phone metadata under the Patriot Act sucks up records on millions of law-abiding Americans daily. We believe that large-scale collection of personal information by the government seriously infringes on Americansâ privacy. The details of whom Americans call, when they call and where they call from is private information. In our opinion, the governmentâs ongoing, overly broad collection is not authorized under a straightforward interpretation of the Patriot Act or any other law.  The White House ought to end this dragnet and sharpen its focus on the terrorists and spies who truly threaten our nationâs security. For our part, Congress should pass the legislation that we have introduced that would stop the bulk phone records collection program and ensure that the executive branch does not have the authority to again intrude so far upon Americansâ constitutional rights. While still allowing law enforcement and intelligence agencies to obtain a wide range of records, our bill, which is supported by members of both parties, would require the government to demonstrate that any private records obtained for intelligence purposes are in some way connected to terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities â an explicit requirement that does not exist in the law today.  Terrorism is a serious threat to our country, our economy and to American lives. Our government needs appropriate surveillance and anti-terrorism tools to combat serious threats to our nation. But it is incumbent on the White House and Congress to ensure that those tools protect Americansâ privacy rights while also keeping Americans safe. The Patriot Actâs bulk phone records collection program does not achieve these goals and, in our view, the NSA has not demonstrated that it is necessary for innocent Americans to give up their privacy when it comes to their phone records.  In recent weeks, intelligence officials have made new assertions about the value of the declassified NSA surveillance programs. In doing so, they have conflated two programs â the collection of the content of communications under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the bulk collection of Americansâ phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The suggestion that âthese programsâ have disrupted âdozens of potential terrorist plotsâ is misleading when it hasnât been demonstrated that the bulk phone records collection program provides a unique value.
Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, both Democrats, represent Colorado and Oregon, respectively, in the Senate. President Obama recently welcomed a public debate about how to protect both national security...