Is the Senate About to Pass a Bill Legalizing NSA Logging of Every American's Phone Calls?

This is what I feared would be the ultimate outcome of the Snowden revelations.

Early on, I wrote about the Edward Snowden NSA leaks that were reported by Glenn Greenwald:

Are we being set up for a more open aggressive tracking by the government? I have no reason to question the sincerity of Glenn Greenwald and his desire to break open the secretive tracking of Americans by the United States government. However, I am very suspicious of the manner in which MSM jumped on the story and pushed it so hard.

A bit later I wrote:

Greenwald has reported that there are more Snowden leaks to come. Let's see what the nature of those leaks are. Will they truly provide shocking revelations or just more unimpressive repackaged news? This may provide the best clue as to whether Snowden is a new generation anti-state cyber-warrior hero  or a cleverly crafted state operative in play to advance a very dangerous new totalitarian grab of control over the people.

And now we have this news from NYT  (my bold):

The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be moving toward swift passage of a bill that would “change but preserve” the once-secret National Security Agency program that is keeping logs of every American’s phone calls, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the panel, said Thursday.
Ms. Feinstein, speaking at a rare public hearing of the committee, said she and the top Republican on the panel, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, are drafting a bill that would be marked up — meaning that lawmakers could propose amendments to it before voting it out of committee — as early as next week.

After the existence of the program became public by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, critics called for it to be dismantled. Ms. Feinstein said her bill would be aimed at increasing public confidence in the program, which she said she believed was lawful.[...]

Ms. Feinstein contended that “a majority of the committee” believed that the call log program was “necessary for our nation’s security.”

Bottom line: At this point, the only clear result of the Snowden leaks is that the Senate is about to pass a bill legalizing the logging of the phone calls of all Americans. Further, who knows what amendments will be added in the mark up stage.  Don't for a minute think the mark ups are going to advance privacy. It will be all about complex paragraphs that will allow even greater surveillance.