President Barack Obama urges Senate to work through recess to keep Patriot Act from expiring

US President Barack Obama is urging the Senate to work through its early summer recess to make sure the Patriot Act does not expire in a week.

"I strongly urge the Senate to work through this recess and make sure that they identify a way to get this done," the president said after his meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato Secretary General. According to TIME, the Senate left on its early summer recess before Memorial Day without passing a bill to reauthorise the Patriot Act or reform it.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has come to an agreement to reform the controversial programme, which allowed the National Security Agency to collect massive amounts of data from citizen's telephone calls.

The agency's controversial programme was made public knowledge when former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the press.

President Obama said the Patriot Act "strikes an appropriate balance" between the American's privacy and the intelligence community, according to TIME. However, he noted that if Congress failed to re-authorise the act, it would put the country's security in danger.

"You have a whole range of authorities that are also embodied in the Patriot Act that are non-controversial, that everybody agrees are necessary to keep us safe and secure," he said. "Those also are at risk of lapsing. So this needs to get done."

Republican presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky took to the Senate floor last week for an 11-hour filibuster to prevent a resolution on the issue. The Patriot Act is scheduled to expire on 1 June.