Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Photo: Reuters

Washington: In May, reacting to revelations of the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans' phone records, members of the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin to end the program.

On Tuesday night, their counterparts across the US Capitol could not win enough votes to proceed even with debate on a bill that sought to accomplish much the same thing.

Part of what accounts for the different outcome is a shift in the climate over the past six months, as a steady stream of disclosures about government surveillance has abated. At the same time, Republican opponents of an overhaul of the NSA's programs have been bolstered by a renewed fear of terrorist attacks by the Islamic State militant group and a sense that now is not the time to alter the intelligence community's authorities.

National Security Administration (NSA) campus in Fort Meade.

Indeed, GOP advocates for the NSA and others appealed to those fears in moving to block the Senate debate.

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On the eve of the vote, two former top national security officials campaigned against the bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined "NSA Reform that Only ISIS Could Love." ISIS is another designation for Islamic State, the Sunni militants battling for control for parts of Iraq and Syria.

Former NSA Director Michael Hayden, who also headed the CIA, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned that IS "uses sophisticated Internet communications to swell its ranks with recruits bearing US, Canadian or European passports who can easily slip back into their native countries and wreak havoc."

That op-ed set the tone for Tuesday's GOP-led assault on the USA Freedom Act, which also specified other surveillance reforms.

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NSA reform bill voted down in US Senate amid terror fears