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 Obama said he had told Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell and other senators that he expects them to act swiftly on
a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would renew
certain powers and reform the bulk collection of telephone data.
"I don't want us to be in a situation in which for a certain period
of time, those authorities go away and suddenly we're dark and
heaven forbid we've got a problem," Obama told reporters in the Oval
Office.
McConnell has called the Senate back to Washington for a rare Sunday
session to deal with the expiration of three provisions of the
Patriot Act, including Section 215, used to justify the National
Security Agency's collection of billions of Americans' telephone
call records.
The NSA program has worried privacy advocates since it was exposed
to journalists two years ago by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, now a fugitive in Russia.
On Friday, online activists blocked congressional offices' access to
thousands of websites to protest the Patriot Act.
Republicans, who control both the Senate and House, have been unable
to agree on how to deal with the expiration. Late last week, the
Senate failed by three votes to advance the USA Freedom Act, the
reform bill backed by Obama and passed overwhelmingly by the House.
A senior Republican leadership aide said late on Friday that the
party's leaders in the House wanted the Senate to take up and pass
the Freedom Act.
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The Freedom Act would end the bulk collection of telephone records
and replace it with a more targeted system for retrieving the
information.
In the Senate, the measure is supported by Democrats, but opposed by
Republican security hawks, who want to extend the Patriot Act
provisions, and libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul, a 2016
Republican presidential candidate.
Paul and other privacy advocates have blocked Senate efforts to pass
any extension.
Congressional aides said backers might be able to win the additional
three Senate votes to advance the Freedom Act, possibly by allowing
opponents to offer amendments.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton and Richard Cowan;
editing by Doina Chiacu and Christian Plumb)
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