As Criticism Grows, Curtailing Surveillance Program Seems Unlikely

By JONATHAN WEISMAN, NYT

WASHINGTON — New revelations about the scope of government surveillance elicited some bipartisan criticism in Congress on Friday, but beyond the bluster, prospects for a legislative response to curtail monitoring of Internet and telephone communications appear remote.

Advocates of Congressional intervention say public pressure from fresh disclosures could revive legislation to at least force more transparency in the government’s surveillance programs.

“The timing has never been better than to revisit our past decisions,” Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, said Friday.

But the main vehicle for such changes — a reauthorization of the 1978 law that created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — passed in December and will not come back for renewal for five years. When the reauthorization was passed, the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, voted down a series of amendments that would have forced transparency or curtailed surveillance.

(More here.)