President Barack Obama on Tuesday, June 2, signed the USA Freedom Act into law, reforming the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. The legislation still permits the government access to this data, although it will have to file requests to obtain the information from phone companies.
“After a needless delay and inexcusable lapse in important national security authorities, my Administration will work expeditiously to ensure our national security professionals again have the full set of vital tools they need to continue protecting the country,” Obama said.
The Freedom Act requires that telephone companies retain metadata as they currently do – from anywhere between 18 months for billing purposes. However, instead of the companies regularly providing US intelligence agencies the data, it will have to submit requests that must be approved by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Passage of the law comes after the Senate cleared it in a 67-32 vote, following hours of debate on whether or not to approve an amended version of the bill, which was overwhelmingly approved in the House in a 388-88 vote last month.
Senators from both parties worked to prevent any alterations to the House version of the measure, as any changes would have sent it back to the House; the bill’s original co-sponsors said the chamber would probably deny any revisions.
“If you amend the bill, you kill the bill,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a cosponsor of the USA Freedom Act, said Tuesday, June 2. “I don’t want the program to go away, but I think the USA Freedom Act is the correct way to go.”
In the end, 23 Republican senators joined 196 House representatives in supporting the Freedom Act.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed dissatisfaction with the way his chamber voted for the bill.
“I cannot support passage of the so-called USA Freedom Act,” he said. “It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens, and it surely undermines American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in my view, at exactly the wrong time.”
Similarly, political cartoonist and author Ted Rall called the bill a “symbolic step in the right direction,” but that “it isn’t meaningful in a practical sense, as most of the NSA programs were not discussed in the debate of the Freedom Act.
Three-time presidential candidate and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul was among those not satisfied with the reform, saying it reduces security and makes government a partner with big business.
“I think the reform act is a very, very dangerous thing. It’s not a slight improvement, as some people argue,” he said, according to RT.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, said the act increases transparency.
“Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act,” the foundation said upon passage of the bill on Tuesday.
House leaders touted the approval of the bill.
“This legislation is critical to keeping Americans safe from terrorism and protecting their civil liberties,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “I applaud the Senate for renewing our nation’s foreign intelligence capabilities.”
Privacy advocates are divided about whether the new legislation does enough to take control of the NSA’s phone metadata surveillance, but Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it is a step forward.
“The passage of the USA Freedom Act is a milestone,” Jaffer said in a statement. “This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check.”
Under the act, NSA data collection will resume for a transition period of six months and other post-9/11 surveillance provisions that also expired Sunday night will continue. Among these include the FBI’s authority to eavesdrop on suspects who are disposing of cellphones to avert surveillance.
(With reports from Associated Press, CBS, FOX, Reuters and RT)
