Paul has made his longtime opposition to the NSA's surveillance dragnet a key tenet of his 2016 campaign and followed through on his pledge to let the Patriot Act expire – although he voted against the USA Freedom Act on Tuesday, arguing that it does not go far enough.
McConnell also seeks to pass other amendments to the USA Freedom Act, which ends the NSA's bulk collection of US phone data, a move by the majority leader which would delay the end of the phone-data dragnet for a year.
Paul spent a total of 10 hours and 30 minutes on Wednesday calling for an end to the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance tactics, eating up one of just three legislative days remaining before lawmakers go on recess till 1 June – the same day that key provisions of the Patriot Act are due to expire.
For those caught directly in Boko Haram's bloody dragnet, hopes are painfully high.
A key provision of the law, Section 215, which has been used to justify the government's dragnet collection of the phone records of US citizens, expires next month, lacking a deal meanwhile to preserve it.
The key provisions of the Patriot Act that deem the federal government's dragnet surveillance legal are set to expire on 1 June.
"There's a strong bipartisan coalition ready to slam the door shut on this latest attempt to prolong the dragnet and strip out new rules on transparency from the USA Freedom Act".
Using technologies that are becoming more powerful and sophisticated, GCHQ and the NSA have been undertaking government-authorised data trawling; the secret services have quietly ushered in the age of the digital dragnet.
The US government has long held up section 215 of the Patriot Act to justify the dragnet collection of American phone records, but the first program was first revealed last June by the Guardian based on documents obtained from Snowden.
McConnell faced a 1 June deadline for the expiration of key provisions of the Patriot Act, which the government has used since the George W Bush administration to justify the dragnet collection of domestic phone records.
Rand Paul attempted to derail efforts to reauthorize bulk collection of American phone records in a dramatic showdown on Wednesday by taking over the floor of the Senate hours before a weekend deadline to renew the justification of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance.
