Republicans Taking Over Congress Isnt the Privacy Nightmare Youd Think

NSA reform may be the last true bipartisan issue.

Republicans won victories nationwide in Tuesdays midterm election, handily taking control of Congress and ousting two key criticsSenator Mark Udall (D. Colorado) and Senator Mark Begich (D. Alaska)of the NSA. The GOP takeover of the legislative branch means Republicans will chair all senate committees, including the powerful Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Privacy advocates like the ACLU are often aligned with the Democratic and liberal sides of politics, so it stands to reason that some might worry this would be a crushing blow to privacy. The biggest NSA defenders are Republicans; the Patriot Act that justifies much of the spying behavior disclosed by Edward Snowden was created and passed under a Republican administration and Congress; and a majority of Republican lawmakers have voted to enhance those spying powers over the years, even after the Snowden information was revealed.

Further, 2015 is shaping up to be a key year in the fight for privacy in the post-Snowden era. A number of provisions of the Patriot Act will be up for reauthorization next June. The USA Freedom Act, which aims to curtail NSA powers, will also finally be up for consideration in the Senate. With more than half of the American people disapproving of the NSAs activities, reform is a clearly pressing issue.

Yet, a Republican majority in the House and Senate is not the devastating blow to privacy you might have expected it to be. Here are four reasons why.

Though NSA reform once was a partisan issue, Edward Snowdens revelations of the depth of government surveillance united Democrats and Republicans in calling for an overhaul. Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, says its too early to tell what direction the new leadership will go, but she says the issue of NSA reform is not a one-senator or a one-party issue.

Take Colorado, for instance. Outgoing Democratic Senator Mark Udall was one of the Senate intelligence committees few members who persistently criticized the agencies it oversaw. He fought all expansions of NSA reach and opposed using drones to spy on US citizens, introduing a bill in 2013 to ensure private drone operators could not spy on people in this country.

If he were to be replaced by a pro-NSA senator, the weight of the reform movement would have become severely unbalanced.

In fact, Republican Cory Gardner, who beat Udall handily by 4 percentage points, has such a good record on privacy that Udall was essentially unable to run on his own sterling record. Gardner recently reversed his position on matters of privacy. Though he initially voted for the updated and expanded Patriot Act in 2011 (which Udall was staunchly against), Gardners record changed dramatically after Snowdens NSA revelations, consistently voting against expanding NSA reach. As a congressman, he co-sponsored the EFF-backed version of the new USA Freedom Act.

This kind of bipartisan support for privacy issues is not unique to Colorado, as one look at the congressional scorecard compiled by the coalition for StandAgainstSpying reveals.

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Republicans Taking Over Congress Isnt the Privacy Nightmare Youd Think