As criticism grows, curtailing surveillance program seems unlikely

But the main vehicle for such changes — a reauthorization of the 1978 law that created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — passed in December and will not come back for renewal for five years. When the reauthorization was passed, the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, voted down a series of amendments that would have forced transparency or curtailed surveillance.

And the voices that most matter — Congressional leaders and senior lawmakers on the intelligence committees — have shown few qualms about the programs, lending them solid support. Attempts to address the surveillance programs could be made during the consideration of other legislation, like the annual defense policy bill that should reach the House floor this month and the Senate in September. Mr. Lee suggested that he and other opponents of the programs could press stand-alone legislation in the coming weeks.

But no new influential voices have yet to emerge in either the Senate or House to emerge to augment the core group of libertarian Republicans and liberal Democrats who have long expressed misgivings about sweeping secret surveillance programs. Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said President Obama must be more forceful in explaining of how vital the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance efforts were to national security, but he raised no objections to the programs.