Expect the Patriot Act, which expires June 1, to be renewed by Congress with more privacy protections for Americans, says House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul.
Appearing on
"Fox News Sunday," the Texas Republican said the re-authorized act would stop metadata collection by the National Security Agency, which has stirred privacy concerns, and put it back in the hands of telephone carriers, which could then be accessed by a FISA court judge's order.
"I think that's where you're going to see Congress headed towards, and the courts have certainly gone in that direction," said McCaul, referring to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision against the bulk metadata collection.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed doubts about letting private telecom companies keep and hold the data, but McCaul disagreed. McCaul is a former federal prosecutor and said he never had trouble getting information from private phone carriers.
Critics say the metadata collection has yet to stop a single terror plot, but, again, McCaul disagreed.
"People ask the question, why haven't we been hit again? We've been able to stop a lot," he said. "We've been lucky, but done a very good job stopping threats from coming in the United States or stopping them when they are in the United States. Certainly the program has helped."
President Barack Obama's administration has not done enough to stop homegrown violent extremism, McCaul said.
FBI Director James Comey is "spot on" about there being potentially thousands of terrorist recruits inside the United States being reached by social media. In fact, he said, Comey's numbers are "very low."
"Yet this administration in its budget allocates zero dollars towards combating homegrown violent extremism," McCaul said.
Instead, the Department of Homeland Security millions of dollars to combat climate change, he said, "rather than combating what I consider one of the biggest threats to the homeland, the violent extremists, radicalizing Islamist terrorists … in the United States of America."
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