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U.S. spy agency's surveillance program set to expire at midnight

Xinhua, June 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

A controversial surveillance program by the National Security Agency (NSA) is set to lapse at midnight after the U.S. Senate on Sunday failed to strike a deal to speed up passage of a House-passed surveillance reform bill.

Although the Senate voted 77-17 in a rare Sunday session to clear a crucial procedural hurdle to begin a debate on the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would end NSA's controversial bulk phone metadata collection program, final passage of the bill will not come till Thursday or Friday, after Senator Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, objected to an expedited final vote on the bill on Sunday.

According to Senate rules, to expedite a final vote on a bill requires consent from all senators. After Paul's refusal, the final vote on the bill is put off till next Tuesday at its earliest.

As a key provision of the 2001 Patriot Act, Section 215, which has been blasted since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unearthed it in 2013, authorizes NSA's phone metadata collection and is set to expire on June 1.

Passed overwhelmingly in the House earlier May, the USA Freedom Act allows the current NSA's surveillance program to continue in the next six months, after which the NSA will be forbidden to store phone metadata. Instead, phone companies will hold those records.

The passing of the USA Freedom Act once appeared to gain momentum after endorsement from the White House as well as a court decision made on May 7 that ruled NSA's surveillance program illegal.

However, Republican infighting in the Senate stalled the passage of the bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted a clear extension for NSA's surveillance while his fellow Republican Paul, determined to make the expiration of the NSA's surveillance program a central issue of his White House bid, refused both House bill and McConnell's clean extension bill.

With the deadline looming on Sunday, McConnell finally budged and tried hard to convince his Republican caucus to move ahead the USA Freedom Bill for debate.

However, Paul still hold firm his stance at least for now.

"Tonight begins the end of bulk collection," said Paul, "the bill will ultimately pass."

In addition to Section 215 of Patriot Act, two lesser-known Patriot Act provisions will also lapse at midnight.

The first one, so far unused, helps intelligence agencies to track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects who have no direct ties to known terrorist groups. This provision does not apply to U.S. citizens.

The second provision, named the "roving wiretap" provision, allows federal agencies to monitor a person rather than a specific phone or electronic device in case the suspect keeps on discarding his communications devices.

The NSA had already begun shutting down the phone collection program since 15:59 p.m. (1959 GMT) on Sunday to ensure ending of the program by midnight. The step was reversible for four hours, but after 19:59 p.m. (2359 GMT), rebooting computers of the surveillance program would take about a day. Endi