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Q: Eight Senators: Reveal FISA Court Decisions 
  
 By Niels Lesniewski 
  
 A bipartisan group of eight senators, including the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, are pushing to declassify important FISA court opinions in the wake of last week’s leaks about National Security Agency surveillance. 
  
 “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies. We can’t have a serious debate about how much surveillance of Americans’ communications should be permitted without ending secret law,” Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement announcing the bill. 
  
 Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy highlighted his past efforts to reveal more about the effect of provisions of the Patriot Act, which has at times put the Vermont Democrat in direct conflict with Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein also happens to sit on the Judiciary Committee. 
  
 “For years, I have pressed for information about the business records program authorized by the PATRIOT Act to be declassified,” Leahy said. “I am proud to join in this bipartisan legislative effort to increase openness and transparency so that we can shed further light on the business records program authorized by this law.” 
  
 Last week’s revelations about the NSA have brought increased attention to the court, which operates in secret under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is the FISA court that required Verizon to provide bulk telephone logs to the NSA. 
  
 The other senators involved in the new effort are Republicans Mike Lee of Utah and Dean Heller of Nevada, along with Democrats Mark Begich of Alaska, Al Franken of Minnesota, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Jon Tester of Montana. 
  
 The bill follows a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in which he said he’s exploring a lawsuit to overturn FISA court decisions. ||||| Eight senators introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require the attorney general to declassify significant opinions made by courts operating under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). [WATCH VIDEO] 
  
  
  
 If the bipartisan bill were adopted, the government would be required to reveal the kinds of National Security Agency surveillance activities that came to light last week. 
  
  
  
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 “Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who is spearheading the effort with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). 
  
 The legislation has a powerful backer in Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have also signed on as co-sponsors. 
  
  
  
 The pairing of prominent liberals such as Franken and Leahy with Lee, a Tea Party favorite, highlights how worries about the NSA programs have blurred partisan lines. 
  
  
  
 Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) expressed support for the FISA measure, as long as it did not endanger current or future intelligence operations. 
  
  
  
 “I think broader engagement with [lawmakers] and congressional oversight” is necessary, Ayotte said. 
  
  
  
 “I would support that, [but] only if we are not tipping off the bad guys,” Ayotte added. “That is the balance here.” 
  
  
  
 The FISA court is the main legal body responsible for authorizing intelligence operations against U.S. citizens on American soil. Currently, FISA opinions are classified. 
  
  
  
 While the legislation has bipartisan backing, it received a chilly reception from Democratic leaders in the Senate. 
  
  
  
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was less than enthusiastic about the Merkley-Wyden proposal, saying only that leadership would be “happy to take a look” at it. 
  
  
  
 “I’m happy, any legislation that people have to offer, I’ll take a look at it and ... we’ll see,” Reid said. 
  
  
  
 The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat was more blunt. 
  
  
  
 “I encourage this, though I think it is going to be ill-fated,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. 
  
  
  
 “I just don’t see a freight train coming down the track,” in terms of getting the White House and Congress behind the Merkley-Wyden bill, Durbin said. 
  
  
  
 Even if a bill got through the House and Senate, it is unlikely that President Obama would accept it, Durbin said. 
  
  
  
 The Merkley-Wyden bill was offered in response to the classified information on the two domestic surveillance programs that were leaked by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old government contractor. 
  
  
  
 Snowden had been working for three months as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked details of the NSA programs to the media. 
  
  
  
 On Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called Snowden a “traitor” and said the leaks had put American lives “at risk.” 
  
  
  
 But Lee said the revelations about the NSA programs that were published last week call for a “serious debate” about the intelligence community’s monitoring of American citizens. 
  
  
  
 “There’s been a pretty public example why people ought to be concerned about these laws that are really broad and give the government all kinds of power,” Lee said. 
  
  
  
 One of the programs Snowden revealed collects cellphone data from Verizon customers to track terror threats, while a second program, PRISM, pulls data from tech companies on foreign Internet users. 
  
  
  
 Obama and the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence committees have defended the programs as critical to national security and respectful of civil liberties. 
  
  
  
 But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pushed back against that argument, claiming the White House had failed to protect Americans’ rights. 
  
  
  
 “Technology has changed the world very substantially [and] ... invaded people’s privacy,” Sanders said. “And government has not responded accordingly.” 
  
  
  
 “I do not believe the American people want to have every phone call they make ... every website they visit tracked by United States government, or the private sector,” Sanders said. 
  
  
  
 The White House said Congress had been briefed on the NSA operations, but many lawmakers say they were unaware of the programs and are demanding more information. 
  
  
  
 Senate Intelligence Committee member Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the first time she had heard of either NSA program is “when it broke in the news.” 
  
  
  
 Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended the programs shortly after the leaks, saying a FISA court deemed the operations legal. 
  
  
  
 That said, “I think having the [FISA] court provide some carefully-worded [program] summaries might be helpful,” Collins said. 
  
  
  
 Those kinds of summaries, provided to lawmakers outside the Armed Services and Intelligence panels, could be a possible alternative to the Merkley-Wyden bill, according to Durbin. 
  
  
  
 “I think that is a good option,” he added. 
  
  
  
 But Senate Intelligence Committee chief Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) disagreed, saying the FISA opinions should remain under wraps. 
  
  
  
 When asked if she agreed with the Merkley-Wyden bill, Feinstein replied: “No, because it was all classified. It was a highly classified program, and we respect that. We have to respect that.” 
  
  
  
 Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he was also against the declassification of the FISA opinions, but agreed with Durbin’s call for summaries of FISA opinions to be made available to members of the intelligence panel. 
  
  
  
 “I do not think they should be declassified, but I do think they should be made available to the [Intelligence] committee on a very timely basis,” King said. 
  
  
  
 He declined to comment on whether that information should be provided to lawmakers outside the defense and Intelligence panels. 
  
  
  
 Jeremy Herb contributed to this report. 
  
 — Published at 10:53 a.m. and updated at 8 p.m. ||||| A bipartisan group of eight senators introduced a bill on Tuesday that would unseal some classified opinions by the court that authorized requests for surveillance. 
  
 The bill would force the Justice Department to unseal certain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions. If the information was too sensitive to national security, the attorney general could instead release a summary of the opinion or provide a report to Congress describing the surveillance that would be implemented. 
  
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 Sponsors include several senators who have railed against the potential for government overreach presented by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). 
  
 (See also: Full coverage on Edward Snowden) 
  
 They say the thrust of the bill is to allow more transparency — and public debate — over the National Security Agency’s data gathering. Merkley said in statement Tuesday that there’s “plenty of room” to have a public discourse over what surveillance methods are appropriate for the government to use without compromising national security. And Wyden described the current process as having “little to no transparency.” 
  
 Other cosponsors include Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). The ACLU has also endorsed the bill. 
  
 Merkley and Lee tried to attach the bill as an amendment to FISA’s five-year extension in December 2012, but their amendment was defeated, 37-54. All the co-sponsors of the bill introduced Tuesday voted for the failed amendment as well as the top rungs of Senate leadership including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). 
  
 All the bill’s co-sponsors but Heller voted against final passage of the FISA reauthorization, which expires in 2017. |||||
A:
Here's one way to cut down on leaks about spy agencies' use of the super-secret FISA court—make the rulings public. Eight senators from both parties backed a bill today that would bring far more transparency to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, reports Roll Call. They want key rulings from the court declassified in the wake of last week's leaked reports in the Guardian and Washington Post. The Hill notes that the bipartisan group of eight ranges from Al Franken on the left to Tea Party favorite Mike Lee. “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies," says Democrat Jeff Merkley, who is leading the effort with fellow Oregonian Ron Wyden. The court operates in secret under FISA, and it was one of its rulings that ordered Verizon to hand over data on phone calls to the NSA. If a ruling were deemed too vital to public safety to unseal, the bill would allow the attorney general to release a summary of it or to provide a report to Congress, reports Politico.