This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 28, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

With just days before they expire, the Senate has reauthorized sweeping federal powers

to eavesdrop on Americans communications

without a warrant.

Amendments to the statute offered to shore up Americans' freedom from unwarranted searches

of their records were tossed aside.

Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, comments on today's vote.

The Senate has approved by a lopsided 73 to 23 vote, the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act.

And what we saw was a really sort of extraordinary spectacle on the Senate floor

that really just extended a pattern we've seen for several years now with

counter-terror surveillance legislation passed in the wake of the 9-11

attacks which is to say for months and months

there's a reauthorization deadline coming up. Everyone knows it. Nothing really is

done. There aren't meaningful hearings hearings there's no real debate and then a few days before in this case four days before the law is slated to expire

there they they essentially gave in to Ron Wyden who'd been gumming things up and allowed debate on a series of amendments.

But then of course the totally manufactured urgency they've created because there's no time to get the House to vote on any

any amendments or approve a changed package means that forget it sorry we can we can have a kind of fake debate, but we can't afford to risk

letting this lapse for a couple of days, even though, of course under the law authorizations for surveillance

program for programmatic surveillance of international communications you know

authorizations last for a year so it's not like anything would happen. You know, it's not like there

would be a gap in their ability to collect suddenly if the legislation had expired for a week

...