The USA Freedom Act is the latest Congressional attempt to end the dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records. It would end domestic spying under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and ensure that other authorities cannot be used to justify similar collection. The bill also provides more safeguards for warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act, which has a loophole that the NSA has used to collect the content of domestic online communications.
The bill also provides for the creation of a Special Advocate to focus on the protection of privacy rights and civil liberties before the FISA Court, and requires more detailed public reporting about the numbers and types of FISA orders that are issued.
“Following 9/11, the USA Patriot Act passed the judiciary committees with overwhelming bipartisan support,” said Sensenbrenner, chairman of the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee in the House, in a statement. “The bill has helped keep Americans safe by ensuring information is shared among those responsible for defending our country and by enhancing the tools the intelligence community needs to identify and track terrorists.
“But somewhere along the way, the balance between security and privacy was lost,” he concluded. Sensenbrenner was a co-author of the 2001 Patriot Act.
The legislation was simultaneously introduced in the House and Senate and has 16 cosponsors in the Senate, including Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). The measure also has more than 70 bipartisan cosponsors in the House and support from a diverse number of groups, ranging from the National Rifle Association to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The government surveillance programs conducted under the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act are far broader than the American people previously understood,” Leahy said in the statement. “It is time for serious and meaningful reforms so we can restore confidence in our intelligence community. Modest transparency and oversight provisions are not enough. We need real reform, which is why I join today with Congressman Sensenbrenner, and bipartisan coalitions in both the Senate and House, to introduce the USA Freedom Act.”
The bill builds on the foundation created by an amendment introduced to the defense appropriations bill in July by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
That amendment, which lost by only 12 votes, sought to ensure that none of the money provisioned by FISA can go to collecting and keeping phone records, unless a specific record relates to a specific investigation into a specific person. If it had passed, there would have been no more paying for the NSA to indiscriminately carry out widespread phone surveillance.