The potential end to a controversial National Security Agency phone records collection program is energizing privacy groups and lawmakers who have long called for stricter limits on domestic surveillance powers.

A top national security aide to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently revealed on a podcast that, for the past six months, the spy agency hasn't used a program that gathers metadata on domestic text messages and phone calls. He predicted that the Trump administration might not ask to renew the program, which is set to expire this year.

The aide’s remarks were followed by reports from The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that the NSA is in the process of shuttering the program.

Some privacy activists say these recent developments have strengthened their hand as they prepare to make their case on Capitol Hill, where they’ll argue that elements of the USA Freedom Act – Congress's response to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's bombshell disclosures in 2013 – should not be reauthorized.

“[Privacy activists] always have thought that the program should end, that there was no basis for it, but it’s even easier to make that decision because it’s been defunct for the past six months,” Daniel Schuman, policy director at privacy group Demand Progress, told The Hill.

If Congress allows for the expiration of the surveillance program’s legal authority, often referred to as Section 215, it would likely defuse what many predicted would be a major congressional battle heading into a pivotal election year.

Representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, began meeting with congressional offices this past week to argue that the call-detail records program should be allowed to sunset, while pushing for other other surveillance reforms as well.

And at a congressional briefing this month, online civil liberties group Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and other lawmakers to end the program.

“It was fortuitously timed to come right after the disclosure that this program hadn’t been used,” Chris Calabrese, CDT's vice president of policy, told The Hill.

A coalition of more than 30 advocacy groups on Wednesday penned an open letter requesting that Congress refuse to reauthorize the wide-ranging surveillance authority, which allows for the gathering of phone records, as well as the warrantless collection of other records deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), an outspoken surveillance critic and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this past week that he will oppose reauthorization.

“It is increasingly clear to me that the NSA’s implementation of reforms to the phone records dragnet has been fundamentally flawed,” Wyden said. “In my view, the administration must permanently end the phone records program and Congress should refuse to reauthorize it later this year.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another staunch critic of surveillance, told The Hill that the program's apparent end is "great news."

"I think that Americans shouldn’t have their privacy invaded by the government without a warrant," he said.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the NSA, on Wednesday said the agency was in a “deliberative process” over the program.

"We'll work very, very closely with the administration and Congress to make recommendations on what authority should be reauthorized,” Nakasone said at the RSA Conference on Cybersecurity in San Francisco.

More:

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/433265-shuttering-of-nsa-surveillance-program-emboldens-privacy-groups