Obama Admin: NSA Spying Will Begin Shutting Down This Week

The Patriot Act provisions that have allowed the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans' phone records officially expire on June 1. But the Obama Administration says the NSA must begin preparing to end its bulk-telephone-spying program as soon as May 22. A Justice Department memo circulated among congressional offices said Congress needs to fully settle its differences over the expiring spy provisions during the week of May 18th in order to avoid an operational interruption to the NSA's mass-surveillance program, which was exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. "After May 22, 2015, the National Security Agency will need to begin taking steps to wind down the bulk-telephone-metadata program in anticipation of a possible sunset in order to ensure that it does not engage in any unauthorized collection or use of the metadata," the memo states.

The memo continues: "NSA will attempt to ensure that any shutdown of the program occurs as close in time as possible to the expiration of the authority, assuming the program has not been reauthorized in some form prior to the scheduled sunset of Section 215. In the event of a lapse in authority and subsequent reauthorization, there will necessarily be some time needed to restart the program. … For these reasons, after May 22, 2015, it will become increasingly difficult for the government to avoid a lapse in the current NSA program of at least some duration."