US Senate leader pushes to extend NSA phone dragnet

The U.S. Senate was deadlocked on Friday over whether to extend authorization for the National Security Agency’s massive collection of domestic telephone records, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisting the surveillance program should continue with no new limits.

With a weekend deadline looming, McConnell advocated for extending the section of the Patriot Act that the NSA has used to justify its collection of millions of U.S. phone records over the last nine years. Section 215 of the Act, which allows the agency to collect any telephone and business records relevant to a counterterrorism investigation, expires June 1, and Congress is scheduled to take a week-long recess starting this weekend.

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